SPECIMENS 



OF THE 



TABLE TALK 



OF THE LATE 



SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. 



IN TWO V OLUM ES. 
VOL. I. 



NEW-YORK: 

PUBLISHED BY HARPER & BROTHERS, 

NO. 82 CLIFF-STP. EET, 

AKD SOLD BY THE PRINCIPAL BOOKSELLERS THROUGHOUT THB 

UNITED STATES. 

18 35. 






Sf 






PREFACE. 



It is nearly fourteen years since I was, for the first 
time, enabled to become a frequent and attentive visiter 
in Mr. Coleridge's domestic society. His exhibition of 
intellectual power in living discourse struck me at once 
as unique and transcendent ; and upon my return home, 
on the very first evening which I spent with him after my 
boyhood, I committed to writing, as well as I could, the 
principal topics of his conversation, in his own words. I 
had no settled design at that time of continuing the work, 
but simply made the note in something like a spirit of 
vexation that .such a strain of music as I had just heard, 
should not last for ever. What I did once, I was easily 
induced by the same feeling to do again ; and when, after 
many years of affectionate communion between us, the 
painful existence of my revered relative on earth was at 
length finished in peace, my occasional notes of what he 
had said in my presence had grown to a mass, of which 
these volumes contain only such parts as seem fit for 
present publication, I know, better than any one can tell 
me, how inadequately these specimens represent the pe- 
culiar splendour and individuality of Mr. Coleridge's con- 
versation. How should it be otherwise 1 Who could 
always follow to the turning-point his long arrow-flights 
of thought 1 Who could fix those ejaculations of light, 
those tones of a prophet, which at times have made me 
bend before him as before an inspired man 1 Such acts 
of spirit as these were too subtle to be fettered down on 
paper ; they live — if they can live anywhere — in the 
memories alone of those who witnessed them. Yet I 
would fain hope that these pages will prove that all is 
not lost ; — that something of the wisdom, the learning, 
1* 



VI PREFACE. 

and the eloquence, of a great man's social converse, has 
been snatched from forgetfulness, and endowed with a 
permanent shape for general use. And although, in the 
judgment of many persons, I may incur a serious re- 
sponsibility by this publication ; I am, upon the whole, 
willing to abide the result, in confidence that the fame 
of the loved and lamented speaker will lose nothing here- 
by, and that the cause of Truth and of Goodness will be 
every way a gainer. This sprig, though slight and im- 
mature, may yet become its place, in the Poet's wreath 
of honour, among flowers of graver hue. 

If the favour shown to several modern instances of 
works nominally of the same description as the present 
were alone to be considered, it might seem that the old 
maxim, that nothing ought to be said of the dead but 
what is good, is in a fair way of being dilated into an un- 
derstanding that every thing is good that has been said 
by the dead. The following pages do not, I trust, stand 
in need of so much indulgence. Their contents may net, 
in every particular passage, be of great intrinsic impor- 
tance ; but they can hardly be without some, and, I hope, 
a worthy interest, as coming from the lips of one at least 
of the most extraordinary men of the age ; while to the 
best of my knowledge and intention, no living person's 
name is introduced, whether for praise or for blame, ex- 
cept on literary or political grounds of common notoriety. 
Upon the justice of the remarks here published, it would 
be out of place in me to say any thing ; and a comment- 
ary of that kind is the less needed, as, in almost every in- 
stance, the principles upon which the speaker founded 
his observations are expressly stated, and may be satis- 
factorily examined by themselves. But, for the purpose 
of general elucidation, it seemed not improper to add a 
few notes, and to make some quotations from Mr. Cole- 
ridge's own works ; and in doing so, I was in addition 
actuated by an earnest wish to call the attention of re- 
flecting minds in general to the views of pohtical, moral, 
and rehgious philosophy contained in those works, which, 
through an extensive but now decreasing prejudice, have 
hitherto been deprived of that acceptance with the pub- 



PREFACE. VU 

lie which their great preponderating merits deserve, and 
will, as I believe, finally obtain. And I can truly say, 
that if, in the course of the perusal of this little work, any 
one of its readers shall gain a clearer insight into the 
deep and pregnant principles, in the light. of which Mr. 
Coleridge was accustomed to regard God and the World, 
— I shall look upon the publication as fortunate, and con- 
sider myself abundantly rewarded for whatever trouble it 
has cost me. 

A cursory inspection will show that these volumes lay 
no claim to be ranked with Boswell's in point of dramatic 
interest. Coleridge differed not more from Johnson in 
every characteristic of intellect, than in the habits and 
circumstances of his life, during the greatest part of the 
time in which I was intimately conversant with him. He 
was naturally very fond of society, and continued to be 
so to the last ; but the almost unceasing ill health with 
which he was afflicted, after fifty, confined him for many 
months in every year to his own room, and, most com- 
monly, to his bed. He was then rarely seen except by 
single visiters ; and few of them would feel any disposi- 
tion upon such occasions to interrupt him, whatever 
might have been the length or mood of his discourse. 
And indeed, although I have been present in mixed com- 
pany where Mr. Coleridge has been questioned and op- 
posed, and the scene has been amusing for the moment — 
I own that it was always much more delightful to me to 
let the river wander at its own sweet will, unruffled by 
aught but a certain breeze of emotion which the stream 
itself produced. If the course it took was not the short- 
est, it was generally the most beautiful ; and what you 
saw by the way was as worthy of note as the ultimate 
object to which you were journeying. It is possible, in- 
deed, that Coleridge did not, in fact, possess the precise 
gladiatorial power of Johnson : yet he understood a 
sword-play of his own ; and I have, upon several occa- 
sions, seen him exhibit brilliant proofs of its effective- 
ness upon disputants of considerable pretensions in their 
particular lines. But he had a genuine dislike of the 
practice in himself or others ; and no shght provocation 



Vlll PREFACE. 

could move him to any such exertion. He was, indeed, 
to my observation, more distinguished from other great 
men of letters by his moral thirst after the Truth — the 
ideal Truth — in his own mind, than by his merely in- 
tellectual qualifications. To leave the every-day circle 
of society, in which the literary and scientific rarely — 
the rest never — break through the spell of personality ; — 
where Anecdote reigns everlastingly paramount and ex- 
clusive, and the mildest attempt to generalize the Babel 
of facts, and to control temporary and individual phenom- 
ena by the application of eternal and overruling principles, 
is unintelligible to many, and disagreeable to more ; — 
to leave this species of converse — if converse it deserves 
to be called — and pass an entire day with Coleridge, was 
a marvellous change indeed. It was a Sabbath past 
expression, deep, and tranquil, and serene. You came 
to a man who had travelled in many countries and in 
critical times ; who had seen and felt the world in most 
of its ranks and in many of its vicissitudes and weak- 
nesses ; one to whom all literature and genial art were 
absolutely subject, and to whom, with a reasonable al- 
lowance as to technical details, all science was in a 
most extraordinary degree familiar. Throughout a long- 
drawn summer's day would this man talk to you in low, 
equable, but clear and musical tones, concerning things 
human and divine ; marshalling all history, harmonizing 
all experiment, probing the depths of your consciousness, 
and revealing visions of glory and of terror to the ima- 
gination ; but pouring withal such floods of light upon the 
mmd, that you might, for a season, like Paul, become 
blind in the very act of conversion. And this he would 
do, without so much as one allusion to himself, without 
a word of reflection on others, save when any given act 
fell naturally in the way of his discourse, — without one 
anecdote that was not proof and illustration of a previ- 
ous position ; — gratifying no passion, indulging no caprice, 
but, with a calm mastery over your soul, leading you on- 
ward and onward for ever through a thousand windings, 
yet with no pause, to some magnificent point in wliich, 
as in a focus, all the party-coloured rays of his discourse 



PREFACE. IX 

should converge in light. In all this he was, in truth, 
your teacher and guide ; but in a little while you might 
forget that he was other than a fellow-student and the 
companion of your way, — so playful was his maimer, so 
simple his language, so affectionate the glance of his 
pleasant eye ! 

There were, indeed, some whom Coleridge tired, and 
some whom he sent asleep. It would occasionally so 
happen, when the abstruser mood was strong upon him, 
and the visiter was narrow and ungenial. I have seen 
him at times when you could not incarnate him, — when 
he shook aside your petty questions or doubts, and burst 
with some impatience through the obstacles of common 
conversation. Then, escaped from the flesh, he would 
soar upwards into an atmosphere almost too rare to 
breathe, but which seemed proper to him, and there he 
would float at ease. Like enough, what Coleridge then 
said, his subtlest listener would not understand as a man 
understands a newspaper ; but upon such a listener there 
would steal an influence, and an impression, and a sym- 
pathy ; there would be a gradual attempering of his body 
and spirit, till his total being vibrated with one pulse 
alone, and thought became merged in contemplation ; — 

And so, his senses gradually wrapt 
In a half &^.eep, he'd dream of better worlds, 
And dreaming hear thee still, O singing lark, 
That sangest like an angel in the clouds ! 

But it would be a great mistake to suppose that the gen- 
eral character of Mr. Coleridge's conversation was ab- 
struse or rhapsodical. The contents of the following 
pages may, I think, be taken as pretty strong presump- 
tive evidence that his ordinary manner was plain and 
direct enough ; and even when, as sometimes happened, 
he seemed to ramble from the road, and to lose himself 
in a wilderness of digressions, the truth was, that at that 
very time he was working out his foreknown conclusion 
through an almost miraculous logic, the difficulty of which 
consisted precisely in the very fact of its minuteness and 
universality. He took so large a scope, that, if he was 
A3 



X PREFACE. 

ititerrupted before he got to the end, he appeared to have 
been talking without an object ; ahhough, perhaps, a few 
steps more would have brought you to a point, a retro- 
spect from which would show you the pertinence of all 
he had been saying. I have heard persons complain 
that they could get no answer to a question from Cole- 
ridge. The truth is, he answered, or meant to answer, 
so fully, that the querist should have no second question 
to ask. In nine cases out of ten he saw the question 
was short or misdirected ; and knew that a mere yes or 
no answer could not embrace the truth — that is, the 
whole truth — and might, very probably, by implication, 
convey error. Hence that exhaustive, cyclical mode of 
discoursing in which he frequently indulged ; unfit, in- 
deed, for a dinner-table, and too long-breathed for the 
patience of a chance visiter, — but which, to those who 
knew for what they came, was the object of their pro- 
foundest admiration, as it was the source of their most 
valuable instruction. Mr. Coleridge's affectionate dis- 
ciples learned their lessons of philosophy and criticism 
from his own mouth. He was to them as an old master 
of the Academy or Lyceum. The more time he took, 
the better pleased were such visiters ; for they came ex- 
pressly to listen, and had ample proof how truly he had 
declared, that whatever difficulties he might feel, with 
pen in hand, in the expression of his meaning, he never 
found the smallest hitch or impediment in the utterance 
of his most subtle reasonings by word of mouth. How 
many a time and oft have I felt his abstrusest thoughts 
steal rhythmically on my soul, when chanted forth by 
him ! Nay, how often have I fancied I heard rise up in 
answer to his gentle touch, an interpreting music of my 
own, as from the passive strings of some wind-smitten 
lyre ! 

Mr. Coleridge's conversation at all times required at- 
tention, because what he said was so individual and un- 
expected. But when he was dealing deeply with a ques- 
tion, the demand upon the intellect of the hearer was very 
great; not so much for any hardness of language, for his 
diction was always simple and easy; nor for the ab- 



FREFACi:. XI 

*truseness of the thoughts, for they generally explained, 
or appeared to explain, themselves ; but pre-eminently on 
account of the seeming remoteness of his associations, 
and the exceeding subtlety of his transitional links. 
Upon this point it is very happily, though, according to 
my observation, too generally, remarked, by one whose 
pov^ers and opportunities of judging were so eminent that 
the obliquity of his testimony in other respects is the more 
unpardonable : — " Coleridge, to many people — and often 
I have heard the complaint — seemed to wander ; and he 
seemed then to wander the most, when, in fact, his re- 
sistance to the wandering instinct was greatest, — viz., 
when the compass and huge circuit by which his illus- 
trations moved, travelled farthest into remote regions, be- 
fore they began to revolve. Long before this coming 
round commenced, most people had lost him, and nat- 
urally enough supposed that he had lost himself. They 
continued to admire the separate beauty of the thoughts, 
but did not see their relations to the dominant theme. 
* * * * However, I can assert, upon my long and inti- 
mate knowledge of Coleridge's mind, that logic the most 
severe was as inalienable from his modes of thinking, as 
grammar from his language."* True: his mind was a 
logic-vice ; let him fasten it on the tiniest flourish of an 
error, he never slacked his hold till he had crushed body 
and tail to dust. He was always ratiocinating in his own 
mind, and therefore sometimes seemed incoherent to the 
partial observer. It happened to him as to Pindar, who 
in modern days has been called a rambling rhapsodist, 
because the connexions of his parts, though never arbi- 
trary, are so fine that the vulgar reader sees them not at 
all. But they are there nevertheless, and may all be so 
distinctly shown, that no one can doubt their existence ; 
and a little study will also prove that the points of con- 
tact are those which the true genius of lyric verse nat- 
urally evolved, and that the entire Pindaric ode, instead 
of being the loose and lawless outburst which so many 
have fancied, is, without any exception, the most artificial 
and highly wrought composition which Time has spared 
* Tail's Mag., Sept., 1834, p. 514. 



Xll PREFACE.. 

to US from the wreck of the Greek Muse. So I can well 
remember occasions, in which, after hstening to Mr. 
Coleridge for several delightful hours, I have gone away 
with divers splendid masses of reasoning in my head, the 
separate beauty and coherency of which I deeply felt, but 
how they had produced, or how they bore upon, each 
other, I could not then perceive. In such cases I have 
mused sometimes even for days afterward upon the 
words, till at length, spontaneously as it seemed, " the 
fire would kindle," and the association, which had es- 
caped my utmost efforts of comprehension before, flash 
itself all at once upon my mind with the clearness of 
noonday light. 

It may well be imagined that a style of conversation 
so continuous and diffused as that M'hich I have just at- 
tempted to describe, presented remarkable difficulties to a 
mere reporter by memory. It is easy to preserve the 
pithy remark, the brilliant retort, or the pointed anecdote ; 
these stick of themselves, and their retention requires no 
effort of mind. But where the salient angles are com- 
paratively few, and the object of attention is a long- 
drawn subtle discoursing, you can never recollect, except 
by yourself thinking the argument over again. In so 
doing, the order and the characteristic expressions will 
for the most part spontaneously arise ; and it is scarcely 
credible with what degree of accuracy language may 
thus be preserved, where practice has given some dex- 
terity, and long familiarity with the speaker has enabled 
or almost forced you to catch the outlines of his manner. 
Yet with all this, so peculiar were the flow and breadth 
of Mr. Coleridge's conversation, that I am very sensible 
how much those who can best judge will have to com- 
plain of my representation of it. The following speci- 
mens will, I fear, seem too fragmentary, and therefore 
deficient in one of the most distinguishing properties of 
that which they are designed to represent ; and this is 
true. Yet the reader will in most instances have little 
difficulty in understanding the course which the conver- 
sation took, although my recollections of it are thrown 
into separate paragraphs for the sake of superior pre- 



PREFACE. Xrit 

cision. As I never attempted to give dialogue — indeed, 
there was seldom much dialogue to give — the great point 
with me was to condense what I could remember on 
each particular topic into intelligible wholes, with as httle 
injury to the living manner and diction as was possible. 
With this explanation, I must leave it to those who still 
have the tones of " that old man eloquent" ringing in their 
ears, to say how far I have succeeded in this dehcate 
enterprise of stamping his winged words with perpetuity. 
In reviewing the contents of the following pages, I 
can clearly see that I have admitted some passages 
which will be pronounced illiberal by those who, in the 
present day, emphatically call themselves liberal — the 
liberal. I allude of course to Mr. Coleridge's remarks 
on the Reform Bill and the Malthusian economists. The 
omission of such passages would probably have rendered 
this publication more generally agreeable, and my dis- 
position does not lead me to give gratuitous offence to 
any one. But the opinions of Mr. Coleridge on these 
subjects, however imperfectly expressed by me, were 
deliberately entertained by him ; and to have omitted, in 
so miscellaneous a collection as this, what he was well 
known to have said, would have argued in me a disap- 
probation or a fear, which I disclaim. A few wordsy 
however, may be pertinently employed here in explain- 
ing the true bearing of Coleridge's mind on the polities' 
of our modern days. He was neither a Whig nor a. 
Tory, as those designations are usually understood;; 
well enough knowing, that, for the most part, half-truths 
only are involved in the Parliamentary tenets of one 
party or the other. In the common struggles of a ses- 
sion, therefore, he took little interest ; and as to mere- 
personal sympathies, the friend of Frere and of Poole, 
the respected guest of Canning and of Lord Lansdowne, 
could have nothing to choose. But he threw the weight 
of his opinion — and it was considerable — into the Tory 
or Conservative scale, for these two reasons : — First, 
generally, because he had a deep conviction that the 
cause of freedom and of truth is now seriously menaced 
hy a democratical spirit, growing more and more rabid* 



XIV PREFACE. 

every day, and giving no doubtful promise of the tyranny 
to come ; and secondly, in particular, because the na- 
tional Church was to him the ark of the covenant of his 
beloved country, and he saw the Whigs about to coalesce 
with those whose avowed principles lead them to lay the 
hand of spoliation upon it. Add to these two grounds, 
some relics of the indignation which the efforts of the 
Whigs to thwart the generous exertions of England in 
the great Spanish war had formerly roused within him ; 
and all the constituents of any active feeling in Mr. Cole- 
ridge's mind upon matters of state are, I beheve, fairly 
laid before the reader. The Reform question in itself 
gave him little concern, except as he foresaw the present 
attack on the Church to be the immediate consequence 
of the passing of the Bill ; " for let the form of the 
House of Commons," said he, " be what it may, it will 
be, for better or for worse, pretty much what the country 
at large is ; but once invade that truly national and es- 
sentially popular institution, the Church, and divert its 
funds to the rehef or aid of individual charity or pubHc 
taxation — how specious soever that pretext may be — and 
you will never thereafter recover the lost means of per- 
petual cultivation. Give back to the Church what the 
nation originally consecrated to its use, and it ought then 
to be charged with the education of the people ; but 
half of the original revenue has been already taken by 
force from her, or lost to her through desuetude, legal 
decision, or public opinion ; and are those whose very 
houses and parks are part and parcel of what the nation 
designed for the general purposes of the clergy, to be 
heard, when they argue for making the Church support, 
out of her diminished revenues, institutions, the intended 
means for maintaining which they themselves hold under 
the sanction of legal robbery ?" Upon this subject Mr. 
Coleridge did indeed feel very warmly, and was accus- 
tomed to express himself accordingly. It weighed upon 
his mind night and day ; and he spoke upon it with an 
emotion which I never saw him betray upon any topic of 
common politics, however decided his opinion might 
be. In this, therefore, he was felix opportunitate mortis ; 



PREFACE. XV" 

non enim vidit ,* and the just and honest of all 

parties will heartily admit over his grave, that as his 
principles and opinions were untainted by any sordid 
interest, so he maintained them in the purest spirit of a 
reflective patriotism, without spleen, or bitterness, or 
breach of social union.* 

* These volumes have had the rather singular fortune of being 
made the subject of three several reviews before pubhcation. One 
of them requires notice. 

The only materials for the Westminster Reviewer were the 
extracts in the Quarterly ; and his single object being to abuse and 
degrade, he takes no notice of any even of these, except those 
which happen to be at variance with his principles in poHtics or 
political economy. To have reflected on the memory of Coleridge 
for not having been either a Benthamite or a Malthusian econo- 
mist, might perhaps have been just and proper, and the censure 
certainly would have been borne by his friends in patience. The 
Westminster Review has, of course, just as good a right to find 
fault with those who differ from it in opinion as any other Review. 
But neither the Westminster nor any Review has a right to say 
that which is untrue, more especially when the misrepresentation 
is employed for the express purpose of injury and detraction. 
Among a great deal of coarse language unbecoming the charac- 
ter of the Review or its editor, there is the following passage : — 
" The trampling on the labouring classes is the religion that is at 
the bottom of his heart, for the simple reason that he (Coleridge) 
is himself supported out of that last resource of the enemies of the 
people, the Pension List." And Mr. Coleridge is afterward called 
a " Tory pensioner," " a puffed up partisan," &c. 

Now the only pension, from any public source or character 
whatever, received by Mr. Coleridge throughout his whole life, 
was the following: — 

In 1821 or 1822, George the Fourth founded the Royal Society 
of Literature, which was incorporated by charter in 1825. The 
King gave a thousand guineas a year out of his own private pocket 
to be distributed among ten literary men, to be called Royal 
Associates, and to be selected at the discretion of the Council. It 
is true that this was done under a Tory Government ; but 1 believe 
the Government had no more to do with it than the Westminster 
Review. It was the mere act of George the Fourth's own princely 
temper. The gentlemen chosen to receive this bounty were the 
following : — 

Samuel Taylor Coleridge ; 
Rev. Edward Davies ; 
Rev. John Jamieson, D. D. ; 
Rev. Thomas Robert Malthus ; 



XYl PREFACE. 

It would require a rare pen to do justice to the con- 
stitution of Coleridge's mind. It was too deep, subtle, 
and peculiar, to be fathomed by a morning visiter. Few 
persons knew much of it in any thing below the surface ; 
scarcely three or four ever got to understand it in all 
its marvellous completeness. Mere personal famiharity 
with this extraordinary man did not put you in possession 
of him ; his pursuits and aspirations, though in their 
mighty range presenting points of contact and sympathy 
for all, transcended in their ultimate reach the extremest 
limits of most men's imaginations. For the last thirty 
years of his life, at least, Coleridge was really and truly 
a philosopher of the antique cast. He had his esoteric 
views ; and all his prose works, from the " Friend" to 
the " Church and State," were little more than feelers, 

Thomas James Mathias ; 
James Millingen ; 
Sir William Ouseley ; 
William Roscoe; 
Rev. Henry John Todd ; 
Sharon Turner. 

I have been told that a majority of these persons — all the world 
knows that three or four at least of them — were Whigs of strong 
water ; but probably no one ever before imagined that their political 
opinions bad any thing to do with their being chosen Royal Asso- 
ciates. I have heard and believe that their only qualifications 
were literature and misfortune ; and so the King wished. This 
annual donation of 1051. a year was received by Mr. Coleridge 
during the remainder of George the Fourth's life. In the first 
year of the present reign the payment was stopped without notice, 
in the middle of a current quarter ; and was not recontinued during 
Coleridge's life. It is true that this resumption of the royal 
bounty took place under a Whig Government ; but I believe the 
Whigs cannot justly claim any merit with the Westminster Re- 
view for having advised that act ; on the contrary, to the best of 
my knowledge, Lord Grey, Lord Brougham, and some other mem- 
bers of the Whig ministry, disapproved and regretted it. But the 
money was private money, and they could of course have no con- 
trol over it. 

If the Westminster Reviewer is acquainted with any other 
public pension, Tory, Whig, or Radical, received by Mr. Cole- 
ridge, he has an opportunity every quarter of stating it. In the 
meantime, I must take the liberty of charging him with the utter- 
ance of a calumnious untruth. — H. N. C. 



PREFACE. XVU 

pioneers, disciplinants, for the last and complete exposition 
of them. Of the art of making books he knew little, and 
cared less ; but had he been as much an adept in it as a 
modern novelist, he never could have succeeded in ren- 
dering popular or even tolerable, at first, his attempt to 
push Locke and Paley from their common throne in Eng- 
land. A little more working in the trenches might have 
brought him closer to the walls with less personal dam- 
age ; but it is better for Christian philosophy as it is, 
though the assailant was sacrificed in the bold and artless 
attack. Mr. Coleridge's prose works had so very limited 
a sale, that although published in a technical sense, they 
could scarcely be said to have ever become publici juris. 
He did not think them such himself, with the exception, 
perhaps, of the " Aids to Reflection," and generally made 
a particular remark if he met any person who professed 
or showed that he had read the " Friend" or any of his 
other books. And I have no doubt that had he Hved to 
complete his great work on " Philosophy reconciled with 
Christian Religion," he would without scruple have used 
in that work any part or parts of his preliminary treatise, 
as their intrinsic fitness required. Hence, in every one 
of his prose writings there are repetitions, either literal 
or substantial, of passages to be found in some others of 
those writings ; and there are several particular positions 
and reasonings, which he considered of vital importance, 
reiterated in the " Friend," the " Literary Life," the "Lay 
Sermons," the "Aids to Reflection," and the "Church 
and State." He was always deepening and widening 
the foundation, and cared not how often he used the same 
stone. In thinking passionately of the principle, he for- 
got the authorship — and sowed beside many waters, if 
peradventure some chance seedling might take root and 
bear fruit to the glory of God and the spiritualization of 
man. 

His mere reading was immense ; and, the quality and 
direction of much of it well considered, almost unique in 
this age of the world. He had gone through most of the 
Fathers, and, I believe, all the Schoolmen of any eminence ; 
while his familiarity with all the more common depart- 



XVm PREFACE. 

ments of literature in every language is notorious. The 
early age at which some of these acquisitions were made, 
and his ardent self-abandonment in the strange pursuit, 
might, according to a common notion, have seemed ad- 
verse to increase and maturity of power in after life ; yet 
it was not so ; he lost, indeed, for ever, the chance of 
being a popular writer ; but Lamb's inspired charity -boy 
of twelve years of age continued to his dying day, when 
sixty-two, the eloquent centre of all companies, and the 
standard of intellectual greatness to hundreds of affec- 
tionate disciples, far and near. Had Coleridge been mas- 
ter of his genius, and not, alas ! mastered by it ; — had 
he less romantically fought a single-handed fight against 
the whole prejudices of his age, nor so mercilessly racked 
his fine powers on the problem of a universal Christian 
philosophy — he might have easily won all that a reading 
public can give to a favourite, and have left a name — 
not greater or more enduring indeed — but — better known, 
and more prized, than now it is, among the wise, the 
gentle, and the good, throughout all ranks of society. 
Nevertheless, desultory as his labours, fragmentary as his 
productions, at present may seem to the cursory observer 
— my undoubting belief is, that in the end it will be found 
that Coleridge did, in his vocation, the day's work of a 
giant. He has been melted into the very heart of the 
rising literatures of England and America ; and the prin- 
ciples he has taught are the master-light of the moral and 
intellectual being of men, who, if they shall fail to save, 
will assuredly illustrate and condemn, the age in which 
they live. As it is, they 'bide their time. 

I might here properly end what will, perhaps, seem 
more than enough of preface for such a work as this ; but 
I know not how I could reconcile with the duty which I 
owe to the memory of Coleridge a total silence on the 
charges which have been made against him by a distin- 
guished writer in one of the monthly publications. I al- 
lude, of course, to the papers which have appeared since 
his death in several numbers of Tait's Magazine. To 
Mr. Dequincey (for he will excuse my dropping his other 
name) I am unknown ; but many years ago I learned to 



PREFACE. XIX 

admire his genius, his learning, his pure and happy style 
— every thing, indeed, about his writing except the sub- 
ject. I knew, besides, that he was a gentleman by birth 
and in manners, and I never doubted his dehcacy or his 
uprightness. His opportunities of seeing Mr. Coleridge 
were at a particular period considerable, and congeniality 
of powers and pursuits would necessarily make those 
opportunities especially valuable to the critical reminis- 
cent. Coleridge was also his friend, and moreover the 
earth lay freshly heaped upon the grave of the departed! 

Now, to all the incredible meannesses of thought, allu- 
sion, or language, perpetrated in these papers, especially 
the first, in respect of any other person, man or womaru, 
besides Mr. Coleridge himself — I say nothing. Let me 
ixi silent wonder pass them by on the other side. I wish 
nothing but well to the writer. But even had I any in- 
terest in his punishment, what could be added to that 
which a returning sense of honour and gentlemanly feel- 
ing must surely at some time or other inflict on such a 
spirit as his ! 

Nor, even with regard to Coleridge, is this the time or 
place — if it were ever or anywhere worth the while — to 
expose the wild mistakes and the monstrous caricature pre- 
vailing throughout the lighter parts of Mr. Dequincey's 
reminiscences. That with such a subject before him, 
such a writer should descend so very low as he has done, 
is indeed wonderful ; bat I suppose the eloquence and 
acuteness of the better parts of these papers were thought 
to require some garnish, and with the taste shown in its 
selection it would be idle to quarrel. Two points only 
call for remark. The first is, Mr. Dequincey's charge of 
plagiarism, which he worthily introduces in the following 
manner : 

" Returning late (August, 1807) from this interesting 
survey, we found ourselves without company at dinner ; 
and being thus seated tete-£i-tete, Mr. Poole propounded 
the following question to me, which I mention, because 
it furnished me with the furst hint of a singular infirmity 
besetting Coleridge's mind : ' Pray, my young friend, did 
you ever form any opinion, or rather, did it ever happen 



XX PREFACE. 

to you to meet with any rational opinion or conjecture of 
others, upon that most irrational dogma of Pythagoras 
about beans ! You know what I mean : that monstrous 
doctrine in wliich he asserts that a man might as well, 
for the wickedness of the thing, eat his own grandmother 
as meddle with beans.' — ' Yes,' I replied ; ' the line is in 
the Golden Verses. I remember it well.' 

" P. ' True : now our dear excellent friend Coleridge, 
than whom God never made a creature more divinely en- 
dowed,' yet, strange it is to say, sometimes steals from 
other people, just as you or I might do ; I beg your par- 
don, — just as a poor creature like myself might do, that 
sometimes have not wherewithal to make a figure from 
my own exchequer : and the other day at a dinner-party, 
this question arising about Pythagoras and his beans, 
Coleridge gave us an interpretation, which, from his man- 
ner, I suspect not to have been original. Think, there- 
fore, if you have anywhere read a plausible solution.' 

" ' I have : and it was in a German author. This 
German, understand, is a poor stick of a man, not to be 
named on the same day with Coleridge : so that, if it 
should appear that Coleridge has robbed him, be assured 
that he has done the scamp too much honour.' 

" P. ' Well : what says the German V 

" ' Why, you know the use made in Greece of beans in 
voting and balloting'? Well : the German says that Pytha- 
goras speaks symbolically ; meaning that electioneering, 
or, more generally, all interference with political in- 
trigues, is fatal to a philosopher's pursuits and their appro- 
priate serenity. Therefore, says he, followers of mine, 
abstain from public affairs as you would from parricide. 

" P. ' Well, then Coleridge has done the scamp too 
much honour ; for, by Jove, that is the very explanation 
he gave us !' " 

" Here was a trait of Coleridge's mind, to be first made 
known to me by his best friend, and first published to the 
world by me, the foremost of his admirers ! But both of 
us had sufficient reasons," &c. 

As Mr. Dequincey has asserted that all this dialogue 
took place twenty-eight years ago, I waive all objections 



PREFACE. XXI 

to its apparent improbability. And I know nothing about 
this " poor stick" of a German, whose name, by-the-by, 
Mr. Dequincey does not mention ; but this I know, that I 
was a little boy at Eton in the fifth form, some six or 
seven years after this dialogue is said to have taken place, 
and I can testify, what I am sure I could bring fifty of 
my contemporaries at a week's notice to corroborate, 
that this solution of the Pythagorean abstinence from 
beans was regularly taught us in school, as a matter of 
course, whenever occasion arose. Whether this great 
discovery was 3.peculium of Eton, I know not ; nor can I 
precisely say that Dr. Keate, and the present Provost of 
King's, and the Bishop of Chester, and other assistant 
masters (for they all had the secret), did not in fact learn 
it from this German ; but I exceedingly doubt their doing 
so, unless Mr. Dequincey will assure me that there was 
an English translation of the German book, if the book 
was in German, existing at that time. If I am asked 
whence the interpretation came, I must confess my ig- 
norance ; except that I very well remember that in Lu- 
cian's " Vitarum audio,'''' a favourite school treatise of 
ours, upon the bidder demanding of Pythagoras, who is 
put up to sale, why he had an aversion to beans, the phi- 
losopher says that he has no such aversion ; but that 
beans are sacred things, first, for a physical reason there 
mentioned ; but principally, because, among the Athe- 
fiians, all elections for offices in the government took place 
by means of them. Of the correctness of this interpre- 
tation, if the Golden Verses were in fact genuine, which 
they are not, we might, indeed, well doubt ; for there are 
numerous authorities which would lead us to believe that 
the practice of voting by beans or ballot was long subse- 
quent to the time of Pythagoras, to whom in all probabil- 
ity the cheirotonia or natural mode of election by a show 
of hands was alone known. But let that pass. Mr. 
Coleridge, it seems, at a dinner-party of country gentle- 
men in Somersetshire, mentioned this solution of the diffi- 
culty — a solution commonly taught at Eton then, and, as 
far as I can learn, for fifty years before, and I believe 
also at Westminster, Winchester, &c. — not to say a word 



XXll PREFACE. 

of Oxford or Cambridge ; — and, because he did not refer 
to a " poor stick" of a German, of whom and his book 
we even now know nothing, " the foremost of Coleridge's 
admirers" pubhshes the tale as " the first hint he re- 
ceived of a singular infirmity besetting Coleridge's mind !" 
Very sharp, learned, and charitable at least ; but let us 
go on. 

Mr. Dequincey says, that Coleridge in one of his Odes 
describes France as — 

" Her footsteps insupportably advancing ;" — (sic.) 

and his charge is not that the words were borrowed 
without marks of quotation, but — that Coleridge " thought 
fit positively to deny that he was indebted to Milton" for 
them. Now, without any view of defending Mr. Cole- 
ridge upon such grounds, but simply to show the univer- 
sal carelessness with which Mr. Dequincey has made all 
these insinuations, I must observe that there is no such 
line in Coleridge's Ode ; the word " footsteps" is neither 
in Samson Agonistes nor the Ode ; the line in the first 
being, — 

" When insupportably his foot advanced ;" 

and in the second, simply, 

** When, insupportably advancing." 

But this is unimportant. That these latter words were 
in Milton was a mere fact about which, with a book-shelf 
at hand, there could of course be no dispute ; — if, there- 
fore, Mr. Coleridge denied that he was indebted to Milton 
for them, I believe (as who in the world, but this " fore- 
most of admirers," would not behevel) — that he meant 
to deny any distinct consciousness of their Miltonic 
origin, at the moment of his using them in his Ode. A 
metaphysician like Mr. Dequincey can explain what every 
common person, who has read half a dozen standard 
books in his life, knows, — that thoughts, words, and 
phrases, not our own, rise up day by day, from the depths 



PREFACE. XXlll 

of the passive memory, and suggest themselves as it were 
to the hand, without any effort of recollection on our 
part. Such thoughts are indeed not natural born, but 
they are denizens at least ; and Coleridge could have 
meant no more. And so it seems that in Shelvocke's 
Voyage, there is a passage showing how " Hatley, being 
a melancholy man, was possessed by a fancy that some 
long season of foul weather was due to an albatross, 
which had steadily pursued the ship ; upon which he 
shot the bird, but without mending their condition." This 
Mr. Dequincey considers the germe — a prolific one to be 
sure — of the Ancient Mariner ; and he says, that upon a 
question being put to Mr. Coleridge by him on the sub- 
ject, Mr. Coleridge " disowned so slight an obligation." 
If he did, I firmly believe he had no recollection of it. 

What Mr. Dequincey says about the Hymn in the vale 
of Chamouni is just. This glorious composition, of up- 
wards of ninety lines, is truly indebted for many images 
and some striking expressions to Frederica Brun's little 
poem. The obhgation is so clear that a reference to the 
original ought certainly to have been given, as Coleridge 
gave in other instances. Yet, as to any ungenerous wish 
on the part of Mr. Coleridge to conceal the obligation, I 
for one totally disbeheve it ; the words and images that 
are taken are taken bodily and without alteration, and not 
the slightest art is used — and a little would have sufficed 
— to disguise the fact of any community between the 
two poems. The German is in twenty hues ; and I print 
them here with a very bald English translation, that all 
my readers may compare them as a curiosity with their 
glorification in Coleridge : — 



Aus tiefem Schatten des schweigenden Tannenhains 
Erblick' ich bebend dich, Scheitel der Ewigkeit, 
Blendender Gipfel, von dessen Hohe 
Ahndend mein Geist ins Unendliche schwebet ! 

Wer senkte den Pfeiler tief in der Erde Schooss, 
Der, seit Jahrtausenden, fast deine masse stiitzt 1 ^ 
Wer thiirmte hoch in des Aethers Wolbung 
Machtig und kiihn dein umatrahltes Antlitz"? 



XXIV PREFACE. 

Wer goss Each hoch aus des ewigen Winters Reic^, 
Zackenstrome, mit Donnergetos,' herab 1 
Und wer gebietet laut mit der Allmacht Siimme : 
'^Hiersolien ruhen die starrenden Wogen ''" 

Wer zeichn^t dort dem Morgensterne die Bahn 1 
Wer kranzt mit Bliithen des ewigen Frostes Sauml 
Wem tont in schrecklichen Harmonieen, 
Wilder Arveiren, dein Wogentiimmel ? 

Jehovah ! Jehovah ! kracht's im berstenden Eis ; 
Lavinendonner roUen's die Kluft hinab : 
Jehovah ! rauscht's in den hellen Wipfeln^ 
Flustert's an reiselnden Silberbachen. 



CHAMOUNI AT SUNRISE. 

To Klopstock, 

Out of the deep shade of the silent fir-grove, trembling I survey 
tiiee, mountain-head of eternity, dazzhng (blinding) summit, from 
whose height my dimly perceiving spirit floats into the everlasting 
(or hovers, is suspended in the everlasting). 

Who sank the pillar deep into the lap of earth, which, for 
centuries past, props (or sustains) thy mass 1 Who upreared 
{thurmte, up-towered) high in the vault of ether mighty and bold 
thy beaming countenance 1 (2ims^raA/fC5, beamed around.) 

Who poured you from on high out of eternal winter's realm, O 
jagged streams {Zackenstrome) downward with thunder noise T 
And who commanded loud, with the voice of Omnipotence, 
'* Here shall the stiffening billows rest 1" 

Who marks out there the path for the morning star 1 Who 
wreaths with blossoms the edge (skirt, border) of eternal frost ? 
To whom, wild Arveiron, does thy wave-commotion (or wave- 
dizziness, hurly-burly, or tumult of waves, Wogentummel,) sound 
in terrible harmonies 1 

Jehovah ! Jehovah ! crashes in the bursting ice ; avalanche 
thunders roll it down the chasm (cleft, ravine). Jehovah ! rus- 
tles (or murmurs) in the bright tree-tojjs ; it whispers in the purl- 
ing silver brooks. 

Mr. Dequincey proceeds thus: — "All these cases 
amount to nothing at all as cases of plagiarism, and for 
that reason expose the more conspicuously that obliquity 
of feeling which could seek to decline the very slight 
acknowledgments required. But now I come to a case 



PREFACE. XXY 

of real and palpable plagiarism ; yet that too of a nature 
to be quite unaccountable in a man of Coleridge's attain- 
ments." 

I will leave all the rest to the pen of Julius Hare. 

" I have been speaking on the supposition that the 
charges of plagiarism and insincerity brought by the 
Opium-eater against Coleridge are strictly, accurately, 
tme — that Coleridge is guilty to the full amount and tale 
of the offences imputed to him. Even in this case, it 
indicates a singular obliquity of feeling, thus to drag them 
forth and thrust them forward. But are they true 1 
Doubtless, — seeing that he who thrusts them forward 
can only do it out of a painful and rankling love of truth 
and justice ; seeing that the voice which comes forth from 
his mask proclaims him to be the ' foremost of Cole- 
ridge's admirers.' Reader, be not deluded and put to 
sleep by a name ; look into the charges ; sift them. 
Among them, the accuser himself acknowledges that 
there is only one of any moment, the others having been 
lugged in to swell the counts of the endictment, through 
a somewhat over-anxious fear — a fear which would have 
been deemed malicious in any one but the foremost of 
his admirers — lest any tittle that could tell against Cole- 
ridge should be forgotten. One case, however, there is, 
he assures us, ' of real and palpable plagiarism :' so, lest 
* some cursed reviewer,' eight hundred or a thousand 
years hence, should ' make the discovery,' he determines 
to prevent him by forestalling him, and states it in full, as 
in admirership bound. The dissertation in the Biographia 
Literaria ' on the reciprocal relations of the esse and the 
cogitare^ is asserted to be a translation from an essay in 
the volume of Schelling's Philosophische Schriften. True : 
the Opium-eater is indeed mistaken in the name of the 
book ; but that is of little moment, except as an addi- 
tional mark of audacious carelessness in impeaching a 
great man's honour. The dissertation, as it stands in 
the Biographia Literaria^ vol. i., pp. 254 — 261, is a 
literal translation from the introduction to Schelling's 
system of Transcendental Idealism ; and though the as- 
sertion that there is no attempt in a single instance to 

Vol L— B 3 



XXTl PREFACE 

appropriate the paper, by developing the arguments, or 
by diversifying the illustrations, is not quite borne out by 
the fact, Coleridge's additions are few and slight. But 
the Opium-eater further says, that ' Coleridge's essay is 
prefaced by a few words, m which, aware of his coin- 
cidence with Schelling, he declares his wilhngness to 
acknowledge himself indebted to so great a man, in any 
case Avhere the truth would allow him to do so ; but in 
this particular case, insisting on the impossibility that he 
could have borrowed arguments which he had first seen 
some years after he had thought out the whole hypothe- 
sis propria marte.'' That Coleridge never can have been 
guilty of such a piece of scandalous dishonesty is clear 
even on the face of the charge : he never could apply 
the word hypothesis to that which has nothing hypothet- 
ical in it. The Opium-eater also is much too precise in 
his use of words to have done so, if he had known or con- 
sidered what he was talking about. But he did not ; and 
owing to this slovenly rashness of assertion, he has 
brought forward a heavy accusation, which is utterly 
false and groundless, the distorted offspring of a benight- 
ed memory under the incubus of — what shall we say ? — 
an ardent admiration. Not a single word does Coleridge 
say about the originality of his essay one way or other. 
It is not prefaced by any remark. No mention is made 
of Schelling within a hundred pages of it, further than a 
quotation from him in page 247, and a reference to him 
in page 250. In an earlier part of the work, however, 
where Coleridge is giving an account of his philosophical 
education, there does occur a passage (pp. 149 — 153) 
about his obligations to Schelling, and his coincidences 
with him. This, no doubt, is the passage which the 
Opium-eater had in his head ; but strangely indeed has 
,he metamorphosed it. For Coleridge's vindication it is 
'necessary to quote it somewhat at length : — 

" ' It would be a mere act of justice to myself, were I 
to warn my readers, that an identity of thought, or even 
similarity of phrase, will not be at all times a certain 
proof that the passage has been borrowed from ScheUing, 
or that the conceptions were originally learned from him. 



PHEFACE. XXVli 

Many of the most striking resemblances, indeed, all the 
main and fundamental ideas, were born and matured in 
my mind before I had ever seen a page of the German 
philosopher. God forbid that I should be suspected of a 
wish to enter into a rivalry with Schelling for the hon- 
ours so unequivocally his right, not only as a -great and 
original genius, but as the founder of the philosophy of 
Nature, and as the most successful improver of the Dy- 
namic system. To Schelling we owe the completion, 
and the most important victories, of this revolution in 
philosophy. To me it will be happiness and honour 
enough, should I succeed in rendering the system itself 
intelligible to my countrymen, and in the application of 
it to the most awful of subjects for the most important 
of purposes. Whether a work is the offspring of a man's 
own spirit, and the product of original thinking, will be 
discovered by those who are its sole legitimate judges, by 
better tests than the mere reference to dates. For read- 
ers in general, let whatever shall be found in this or any 
future work of mine, that resembles or coincides with the 
doctrines of my German predecessor, though contemporary, 
be wholly attributed to him ; provided that the absence of 
direct references to his books, which I could not at all times 
make with truth, as designating citations or thoughts actu- 
ally derived from him, and which I trust ivould, after this 
general acknowledgment, be superfluous, be not charged on 
me as an ungenerous concealment or intentional plagiarism.'* 
" Yet the charge which he thus earnestly deprecates has 
been brought against him ; and that, too, by a person enti- 
tling himself the foremost of his admirers ! Heaven pre- 
serve all honest men from such forward admirers ! The 
boy who rendered nil admirari, not to be admired, must have 
had something of prophecy in him, when he pronounced 
this to be an indispensable recipe for happiness. Cole- 
ridge, we see, was so far from denying or shuffling about 
his debts to Schelling, that he makes over every passage 
to him on which the stamp of his mind could be discov- 
ered. Of a truth, if he had been disposed to purloin, he 
never would have stolen half a dozen pages from the 
head and front of that verv work of SchelUng's which was 
■ B2 



XXVlll PREFACE. 

the likeliest to 'fall into his reader's hands ; and the first 
sentence of which one could not read without detecting 
the plagiarism. Would any man think of pilfering a col- 
umn from the porch of St. Paul's 1 The high praise 
which Coleridge bestows on Schelling would naturally 
excite a wish in such of his readers as felt an interest in 
his philosophy, to know more of the great German. The 
first books of his they would take up would be his Natur- 
philosophie and his Transcendental Idealism; these are 
the works which Coleridge himself mentions ; and the 
latter, from its subject, would attract them the most. For 
the maturer exposition of Schelling's philosophy, in the 
Zeitschrift fur spekulative Physi/c, is hardly to be met 
with in England, having never been published except in 
that journal ; and being still no more than a fragment. 
Indeed, Coleridge himself does not seem to have known 
it ; and Germany has, for thirty years, looked in vain ex- 
pectation for the doctrine of the greatest of her philoso- 
phers. 

" But, even with the fullest conviction that Coleridge 
cannot have been guilty of intentional plagiarism, the 
reader will probably deem it strange that he should have 
transferred half a dozen pages of Schelling into his vol- 
ume without any reference to their source. And strange it 
undoubtedly is ! The only way I see of accounting for it is 
from his practice of keeping note-books or journals of his 
thoughts, filled with observations and brief dissertations 
on such matters as happened to strike him, with a sprink- 
ling now and then of extracts and abstracts from the books 
he was reading. If the name of the author from whom 
he took an extract was left out, he might easily, years 
after, forget whose property it was ; especially when he 
had made it in some measure his own, by transfusing it 
into his own English. That this may happen I know 
from my own experience, having myself been lately puz- 
zled by a passage which I had translated from Kant some 
years ago, and which cost me a good deal of search be- 
fore I ascertained that it was not my own. Yet my 
memory in such minutiae is tolerably accurate, while 
Coleridge's was notoriously irretentive. That this solu- 



PREFACE. XXIX 

tion is the true one, may, I think, be collected from the 
references to Schelling, in pages 247 and 250. In 
both these places we find a couple of pages translated, 
with some changes and additions from the latter part of 
Schelling's Abhandlungen zur Erlduienmg des Idealismus 
der Wissenchaftslehre. In neither place are we told that 
we are reading a translation. Yet that the author cannot 
be conscious of any intentional plagiarism is clear, from 
his mentioning SchelUng's name, and, in the latter place, 
even that of this particular work. Here, again, I would 
conjecture, that the passages must have been transcribed 
from some old note-book ; only in these mstances, Schel- 
ling's name was marked down at the end of the first ex- 
tract, and at the beginning of the second ; and so the end 
of the first extract is ascribed to him, and he is cited at 
the beginning of the second. 

" There is also another passage about the mystics, in 
pages 140, 141, acknowledged to be translated from a 
recent continental writer, which comes from Schelling's 
pamphlet against Fichte. In this case, Coleridge knew 
that he was setting forth what he had borrowed from 
another : for he had not been long acquainted with this 
work of Schelling's, as may be gathered from his w^ay 
of speaking of it in p. 153, and from his saying, in p. 
150, that Schelling has lately avowed his affectionate 
reverence for Behmen. Schelling's pamphlet had ap- 
peared eleven years before ; but, perhaps, it did not find 
its way to England till the peace ; and Coleridge, having 
read it but recently, inferred that it was a recent publica- 
tion. These passages form welinigh the sum of Cole- 
ridge's loans from Schelling ; and, with regard to these, 
on the grounds here stated, though I do not presume to 
rank myself among the foremost of his admirers, I 
readily acquit him of all suspicion of ungenerous con- 
cealment or intentional plagiarism."* 

A single word more. It is said that Mr. Coleridge 
was " an unconscionable plagiary, like Byron.''''\ With 

* Briiish Magazine, January, 1835. 

t Edinburgh Review, cxxiii. Of course, I have no intention 
of answering the criticisms or correcting all the mistakes of the 
3* 



XXX PREFACE. 

submission, nothing could possibly be more unlike. 
The charge against Lord Byron, — not his own affected 
one, but the real one, is this, — that having borrowed 
liberally from particular passages, and being deeply, 
although indefinably, indebted to the spirit of the writings 
of Wordsworth and Coleridge — yes, and of Southey, 
too — he not only made no acknowledgment — that was 
not necessary — but upon the principle of the odisse quern 
icBseris he took every opportunity, and broke through 
every decency of literature, and even common manners, 
to malign, degrade, and, as far as in him lay, to destroy 
the public and private characters of those great men. 
He did this in works published by himself in his own 
lifetime, and what is more, he did it in violation of his 
knowledge and convictions to the contrary ; for his own 
previous written and spoken admiration of the genius of 
those whom he so traduced and affected to contemn, was, 
and still is, on record ; so that well might one of his in- 

Edinburgh Reviewer ; but one of his remarks deserves notice. He 
quotes two passages, the one beginning — " Negatively, there may 
be more of the philosophy of Socrates in the Memorabiha of 
Xenophon," &c. (vol. i., p. 16), and the other beginning — "Pla- 
to's works are logical exercises for the mind," &c. (vol. i., p. 48), 
and says they are contradictory. They might, perhaps, have 
been more clearly expressed ; but no contradiction was intended, 
nor do the words imply any. Mr. C. meant in both, that Xeno- 
phon had preserved the most of the man Socrates ; that he was 
the best Boswell ; and that Socrates, as a persona dialoga, was 
little more than a poetical phantom in Plato's hands. On the 
other hand, he says that Plato is more Socratic, that is, more of a 
philosopher in the Socratic mode of reasoning (Cicero calls the 
Platonic writings generally, Socraiici libri); and Mr. C. also says, 
that in the metaphysical disquisitions Plato is Pythagorean, mean- 
ing, that he worked on the supposed ideal or transcendental prin- 
ciples of the extraordinary founder of the Italian school. 

And [ cannot forbear expressing my surprise that the Edin- 
burgh Reviewer — so imperfectly acquainted with Mr. Coleridge's 
writings as he evidently is — should have permitted himself the 
use of such language as that " Coleridge was an unconscion- 
able plagiary," and that " he pillaged from himself and oth- 
ers ;" — charges, which a httle more knowledge of his subject, or 
a little less reliance on the already exposed misrepresentations of 
a magazine, would surely have prevented him from flinging out so 
hastily against the memory of a great man. — Ed. 



PREFACE. XXXI 

vulnerable antagonists say ; — " Lord Byron must have 
known that I had the fiocci of his eulogium to balance 
the nauci of his scorn, and that the one would have 
nihili-pilified the other, even if I had not well understood 
the worthlessness of both."* 

Now, let the taldng on the part of Coleridge be allow- 
ed, — need I, after the preceding passage cited by Mr. 
Hare, expressly draw the contrast as to the manner 1 
\^erily, of Lord Byron, morally and intellectually con- 
sidered, it may be said : — 

Si non alium late spirasset odorem, 
Laurus erat. 

It was in my heart to have adverted to one other 
point of a different and graver character, in respect of 
which the unfeeling petulance and imperfect knowledge 
of Mr. Dequincey have contributed to make what he 
says upon it a cruel calumny on Coleridge. But I re- 
frain. This is not the place. A time will come when 
Coleridge's Life may be written without wounding the 
feelings or gratifying the malice of any one ; — and then, 
among other misrepresentations, that as to the origin of 
his recourse to opium will be made manifest ; and the 
tale of his long and passionate struggles with, and final 
victory over, the habit, will form one of the brightest as 
well as most interesting traits of the moral and religious 
being of this humble, this exalted Christian. 

— But how could this writer trust to the discretion of 
Coleridge's friends and relatives "? What, if a justly 
provoked anger had burst the bounds of compassion ! 
Does not Mr. Dequincey well know that with regard to 
this as well as every other article in his vile heap of 
personalities, the little finger of recrimination would 
bruise his head in the dust ? — 

Coleridge — blessings on his gentle memory ! — Cole- 
ridge was a frail mortal. He had indeed his peculiar 
weaknesses as well as his unique powers ; sensibilities 

* Southey's Essays, Moral and Political. Vol. ii., Letter con- 
erning Lord Byron. 



XXXU PREFACE. 

that an averted look would rack, a heart which would 
have beaten calmly in the tremblings of an earthquake. 
He shrank from mere uneasiness like a child, and bore 
the preparatory agonies of his death-attack like a martyr. 
Sinned against a thousand times more than sinning, he 
himself suffered an almost life-long punishment for his 
errors, while the world at large has the unwithering 
fruits of his labours, his genius, and his sacrifice. 
Necesse est tanquam immaturam mortem ejus dejleam ; si 
tamen fas est aut flere, aut omnino mortem vocare, qua tanti 
viri mortalitas magis finita quam vita est. Vivit enim, 
vivetque semper, atque etiam latius in memoria hominum et 
sermone versabitur,postquamab oculis recessit. 



Samuel Taylor Coleridge was the youngest child of 
the Reverend John Coleridge, Vicar of the parish of Ot- 
tery St. Mary, in the county of Devon, and master of 
Henry the Eighth's Free Grammar School in that town. 
His mother's maiden name was Ann Bowdon. He was 
born at Ottery on the 21st of October, 1772, "about 
eleven o'clock in the forenoon," as his father the Vicar 
has, with rather a curious particularity, entered it in the 
register. 

He died on the 25th of July, 1834, in Mr. Gillman's 
house, in the Grove, Highgate, and is buried in the old 
churchyard, by the roadside. 



AI AE TEAI Z£20TSIN AHAONES- 



H. N. C. 



Lincoln's Inn, 11th May, 1835. 



TABLE-TALK. 



December 29, 1822. 

Character of Othello — Schiller^s Robbers — Shakspeare 
— Scotch Novels — Lord Byron — John Kemble — 
Mathews. 

Othello must not be conceived as a negro, but a 
high and chivalrous Moorish chief. Shakspeare 
learned the spirit of the character from the Spanish 
poetry, which was prevalent in England in his time.* 
Jealousy does not strike me as the point in his pas- 
sion ; I take it to be rather an agony that the creature 
whom he had believed angelic, with whom he had 
garnered up his heart, and whom he could not help 
still loving, should be proved impure and worth- 
less. It was the struggle not to love her. It was a 
moral indignation and regret that virtue should so fall : 
— " But yet the pity of it, lago ! — O lago ! the pity of 
it, lago !" In addition to this, his honour was con- 
cerned : lago would not have succeeded but by hint- 
ing that his honour was compromised. There is no 
ferocity in Othello ; his mind is majestic and com- 
posed. He deliberately determines to die ; and speaks 
his last speech with a view of showing his attachment 
to the Venetian state, though it had superseded him. 



Schiller has the material Sublime ;t to produce an 
effect, he sets you a whole town on fire, and throws 

* Caballeros Granadinos, 
Aunque Moros, hijos d'algo. — Ed 
t This expression — " material sublime," like a hundred others 
which have slipped into general use, came originally from Mr. 
Coleridge, and was by him, in the first instance, applied to Schil- 
ler's Robbers. — See act iv., sc. 5. — Ed. 
B3 



34 TABLE-TALK 

infants with their mothers into the flames, or locks up 
a father in an old tower. But Shakspeare drops a 
handkerchief, and the same or greater effects follow. 

Lear is the most tremendous effort of Shakspeare 
as a poet ; Hamlet as a philosopher or meditater ; and 
Othello is the union of the two. There is something 
gigantic and unformed in the former two ; but in the 
latter, every thing assumes its due place and propor- 
tion, and the whole mature powers of his mind are 
displayed in admirable equilibrium. 



I think Old Mortality and Guy Mannering the best 
of the Scotch novels. 



It seems, to my ear, that there is a sad want of har- 
mony in Lord Byron's verses. Is it not unnatural to 
be always connecting very great intellectual power 
with utter depravity ? Does such a combination often 
really exist in rerum naturd ? 



I always had a great liking — I may say, a sort of 
nondescript reverence — for John Kemble. What a 
quaint creature he was ! I remember a party, in 
which he was discoursing in his measured manner 
after dinner, when the servant announced his carriage. 
He nodded, and went on. The announcement took 
place twice afterward ; Kemble each time nodding 
his head a little more impatiently, but still going on. 
At last, and for the fourth time, the servant entered, 
and said, — " Mrs. Kemble says, sir, she has the rheu- 
matise, and cannot stay." " Add ism /" dropped John, 
in a parenthesis, and proceeded quietly in his harangue. 



Kemble would correct anybody, at any time, and in 
any place. Dear Charles Mathews — a true genius in 
his line, in my judgment — told me he was once per- 
forming privately before the King. The King was 
much pleased with the imitation of Kemble, and said, 
— " I liked Kemble very much. He was one of my 
earliest friends. I remember once he was talking, 



OF S. T. COLERIDGE. 35 

and found himself out of snuff. I offered him my box. 
He declined taking any — ' he, a poor actor, could not 
put his fingers into a royal box.' I said, ' Take some, 
pray ; you will ohleege me.' Upon which Kemble re- 
plied, — ' It would become your royal mouth better to 
say, oblige me ;' and took a pinch." 



It is not easy to put me out of countenance, or in- 
terrupt the feeling of the time, by mere external noise 
or circumstance ; yet once I was thoroughly done up, 
as you would say. I was reciting, at a particular 
house, the " Remorse ;" and was in the midst of Al- 
hadra's description* of the death of her husband, when 

* " Alhadra. This night your chieftain arm'd himself, 
And hurried from me. But I followed him 
At distance, till I saw him enter there ! 

Naomi. Tlie cavern 1 

Alhadra. Yes, the mouth of yonder cavern 
After a while I saw the son of Valdez 
Rush by with flaring torch : he likewise enter'd. 
There was another and a longer pause ;. 
And once, melhought, I heard the clash of swords I 
And soon the son of Valdez reappear'd : 
He flung his torch towards the moon in sport, 
And seem'd as he were mirthful ! I stood listening, 
Impatient for the footsteps of my husband. 

Naomi. Thou calledst him 1 

Alhadra. I crept into the cavern — 
'Twas dark and very silent. What saidst thou T 
No ! No ! I did not dare call Isidore, 
Lest I should hear no answer I A brief while, 
Belike, I lost all thought and memory 
Of that for which I came ! After that pause^ 

Heaven ! I heard a groan, and foUow'd it ; 
And yet another groan, which guided me 
Into a strange recess — and there was light, 

A hideous light ! his torch lay on the ground ; 
Its flame burnt dimly o'er a chasm's brink : 

1 spake ; and whilst I spake, a feeble groan 

Came from that chasm 1 it was his last — his death-groan! 

Naomi. Comfort her, Allah '. 

Alhadra. I stood in unimaginable trance 
And agony that cannot be remember'd, 
Listening with horrid hope to hear a groan ! 
But I had heard his last , — my husband's death-groan. 1 



36 TABLE-TALK 

a scrubby boy, with a shining face set in dirt, burst 
open the door and cried out, — " Please, ma'am, master 
says, Will you ha', or will you not ha', the pin-round ?" 



January 1, 1823. 

Parliamentary Privilege — Permanency and Progres- 
sion of Nations — Kant'^s Races of Mankind. 

Privilege is a substitution for Law, where, from 
the nature of the circumstances, a law cannot act 
without clashing with greater and more general prin- 
ciples. The House of Commons must, of course, 
have the power of taking cognizance of offences 
against its own rights. Sir Francis Burdett might 
have been properly sent to the tower for the speech 
he made in the House ;* but when afterward he pub- 

Naomi. Haste ! let us onward ! 
Alhadra. I look'd far down the pit — 

My sight was bounded by a jutting fragment ; 

And it was stain'd with blood. Then first I shriek'd ; 

My eyeballs burnt, my brain grew hot as fire, 

And all the hanging drops of the wet roof 

Turn'd into blood — I saw them turn to blood ! 

And I was leaping wildly down the chasm, 

When on the further brink I saw his sword, 

And it said, Vengeance ! — Curses on my tongue ! 

The moon hath moved in heaven, and I am here, 

And he hath not had vengeance ! — Isidore ! ^ 

Spirit of Isidore, thy murderer lives ! 

Away, away!" — Act iv., sc. 3. 
* March 12, 1810. Sir Francis Burdett made a motion in the 
House of Commons for the discharge of Gale Jones, who had 
been committed to Newgate by a resolution of the House on the 
21st of February preceding. Sir Francis afterward published in 
Cobbett's Political Register, of the 24th of the same month of 
March, a " Letter to his Constituents, denying the power of the 
House of Commons to imprison the people of England," and he 
accompanied the letter with an argument in support of his posi- 
tion. On the 27th of March a complaint of breach of privilege, 
founded on this publication, was made in the House by Mr. (now 
Sir Thomas) Lethbridge, and after several long debates, a motion 
that Six Francis Burdett should be committed to the Tower, was 



OF S. T. COLERIDGE. 37 

lished it in Cobbett, and they took cognizance of it as 
a breach of privilege, they violated the plain distinc- 
tion between privilege and law. As a speech in the 
House, the House could alone animadvert upon it, 
consistently with the effective preservation of its most 
necessary prerogative of freedom of debate ; but when 
that speech became a book, then the law was to look 
to it ; and there being a law of libel, commensurate 
with every possible object of attack in the state, privi- 
lege, which acts, or ought to act, only as a substitute 
for other laws, could have nothing to do with it. I 
have heard that one distinguished individual said, — 
" That he, for one, would not shrink from affirming, 
that if the House of Commons chose to burn one of 
their own members in Palace Yard, it had an inherent 
power and right by the constitution to do so." This 
was said, if at all, by a moderate-minded man ; and 
may show to what atrocious tyranny some persons 
may advance in theory, under shadow of this word 
privilege. 



There are two principles in every European and 
Christian state : Permanency and Progression.* In 

made on the 5th of April, 1810, by Sir Robert Salisbury, and 
carried by a majority of 38. — Ed. 

* See this position stated and illustrated in detail in Mr. Cole- 
ridge's work, " On the Constitution of the Church and State, 
according to the Idea of each," p. 21., 2d edit., 1830. Well 
acquainted as I am with the fact of the comparatively small accep- 
tation which Mr. Coleridge's prose works have ever found in the 
literary world, and with the reasons, and, what is more, with the 
causes, of it, I still wonder that this particular treatise has not 
been more noticed : first, because it is a little book ; secondly, 
because it is, or at least nineteen twentieths of it are, written in 
a popular style ; and thirdly, because it is the only work that I 
know or have ever heard mentioned, that even attempts a solu- 
tion of the difficulty in which an ingenious enemy of the church 
of England may easily involve most of its modern defenders in 
Parliament, or through the press, upon their own principles and 
admissions. Mr. Coleridge himself prized this little work highly, 
although he admitted its incompleteness as a composition : — 
" But I don't care a rush about it," he said to me, " as an author. 
The saving distinctions are plainly stated in it, and I am sure 

4 



38 TABLE-TALK 

the civil wars of the seventeenth century in England, 
which are as new and fresh now as they were a hun- 
dred and sixty years ago, and will be so for ever to us, 
these two principles came to a struggle. It was nat- 
ural that the great and the good of the nation should 
be found in the ranks of either side. In the Moham- 
medan states, there is no principle of permanence ; 
and, therefore, they sink directly. They existed, and 
could only exist, in their efforts at progression ; when 
they ceased to conquer, they fell in pieces. Turkey 
would long since have fallen, had it not been supported 
by the rival and conflicting interests of Christian Eu- 
rope. The Turks have no church ; religion and 
state are one ; hence there is no counterpoise, no mu- 
tual support. This is the very essence of their Uni- 
tarianism. They have no past ; they are not an his- 
torical people ; they exist only in the present. China 
is an instance of a permanency without progression* 
The Persians are a superior race : they have a history 
and a literature ; they were always considered by the 
Greeks as quite distinct from the other barbarians. 
The Afghans are a remarkable people. They have a 
sort of republic. Europeans and Orientalists may be 
well represented by two figures standing back to back : 
the latter looking to the east, that is, backwards •, the 
former looking westward, or forwards. 



Kant assigns three great races of mankind. If 
two individuals of distinct races cross, a third, or ter~ 
tium aliquid^ is invariably produced, different from 
either, as a white and a negro produce a mulatto. But 
when different varieties of the same race cross, the 
offspring is according to what we call chance ; it is 
now like one, now like the other parent. Note this, 
when you see the children of any couple of distinct Eu- 
ropean complexions, — as English and Spanish, German 
and Italian, Russian and Portuguese, and so on. 

nothing is wanted to make them tell, but that some kind friend 
ehould steal them from their obscure hiding-place, and just tum- 
ble them down before the public as his own.'" — E. 



OP S. T. COLERIDGE. 39 

January 3, 1823. 

Materialism — Ghosts. 

Either we have an immortal soul, or we have not. 
If we have not, we are beasts ; the first and wisest of 
beasts, it may be ; but still true beasts.* We shall 
only differ in degree, and not in kind ; just as the ele- 
phant differs from the slug. But by the concession 
of all the materialists of all the schools, or almost all, 
we are not of the same kind as beasts — and this also 
we say from our own consciousness. Therefore, me- 
thinks, it must be the possession of a soul within us 
that makes the difference. 



Read the first chapter of Genesis without prejudice, 
and you will be convinced at once. After the narrative 
of the creation of the earth and brute animals, Moses 
seems to pause, and says : — " And God said, Let us 
make man in our image, after our likeness. '''' And in the 
next chapter, he repeats the narrative : — " And the 
Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and 
breathed into his nostrils the breath of life ;" and then 
he adds these words, — " and man became a living soul.'^ 
Materialism will never explain these last words. 



Define a vulgar ghost with reference to all that is 
called ghost-like. It is visibility without tangibility ; 
which is also the definition of a shadow. Therefore, 
a vulgar ghost and a shadow would be the same ; be- 
cause two different things cannot properly have the 
same definition. A visible substance without suscepti- 
bility of impact, I maintain to be an absurdity. Un- 
less there be an external substance, the bodily eye 

* " Try to conceive a man without the ideas of God, eternity, 
freedom, will, absolute truth ; of the good, the true, the beautiful, 
the infinite. An animal endowed with a memory of appearances 
!and facts might remain. But the man will have vanished, and 
you have instead a creature more subtle than any beast of the 
field, but likewise cursed above every beast of the field ; upon the 
belly must it go, and dust must it eat, all the days of its life."— - 
Church and Stale, p. 54. n 



40 TABLE-TALK 

cannot see it ; therefore, in all such cases, that which 
is supposed to be seen is, in fact, not seen, but is an 
image of the brain. External objects naturally pro- 
duce sensation ; but here, in truth, sensation produces, 
as it were, the external object. 

In certain states of the nerves, however, I do be- 
lieve that the eye, although not consciously so directed, 
may, by a slight convulsion, see a portion of the body, 
as if opposite to it. The part actually seen will by 
common association seem the whole ; and the whole 
body will then constitute an external object, which ex- 
plains many stories of persons seeing themselves lying 
dead. Bishop Berkeley once experienced this. He 
had the presence of mind to ring the bell, and feel his 
pulse ; keeping his eye still fixed on his own figure 
right opposite to him. He was in a high fever, and the 
brain-image died away as the door opened. I observed 
something very like it once at Grasmere ; and was so 
conscious of the cause, that I told a person what I was 
experiencing, while the image still remained. 

Of course, if the vulgar ghost be really a shadow, 
there must be some substance of which it is the 
shadow. These visible and intangible shadows, with- 
out substances to cause them, are absurd. 



January 4, 1823. 

Character of the Age for Logic — Plato and Xenophon 
— Greek Drama — Kotzehue — Burke. 

This is not a logical age. A friend lately gave 
me some political pamphlets of the time of Charles I. 
and the Cromwellate. In them the premises are fre- 
quently wrong, but the deductions are almost always 
legitimate ; whereas, in the writings of the present day, 
the premises are commonly sound, but the conclusions 
false. I think a great deal of commendation is due to 
the University of Oxford, for preserving the study of 
logic in the schools. It is a great mistake to suppose 
geometry any substitute for it. 



OF S. T. COLERIDGE. 41 

Negatively, there may be more of the philosophy 
of Socrates in the Memorabilia of Xenophon than in 
Plato : that is, there is less of what does not belong to 
Socrates ; but the general spirit of, and impress on left 
by, Plato, are more Socratic. 

In ^schylus religion appears terrible, malignant, 
and persecuting : Sophocles is the mildest of the three 
tragedians, but the persecuting aspect is still maintain- 
ed : Euripides is like a modern Frenchman, never so 
happy as when giving a slap at the gods altogether. 



Kotzebue represents the petty kings of the islands 
in the Pacific ocean exactly as so many Homeric chiefs. 
Riches command universal influence, and all the kings 
are supposed to be descended from the gods. 



I confess I doubt the Homeric genuineness of ^uapvoev 
yeXuTscTct.* It sounds to me much more like a pretti- 
ness of Bion or Moschus. 



The very greatest writers write best when calm, and 
exerting themselves upon subjects unconnected with 
party. Burke rarely shows all his powers unless where 
he is in a passion. The French Revolution was alone a 
subject fit for him. We are not yet aware of all the 
consequences of that event. We are too near it. 



Goldsmith did every thing happily. 



You abuse snuff! Perhaps it is the final cause of 
the human nose. 



A rogue is a roundabout fool ; a fool in circumben- 
dihus, 

iraid' (6v f) 6' apa fniv KtitLStY 6i^aT0 xdXir^, 
iaKpvdsv ytXdaaaa. — Iliad, Z'., vi., 482. 

4* 



42 TABLE-TALK 



January 6, 1823. 

St. John's Gospel — Christianity — Epistle to the He- 
brews — The Logos — Reason and Understanding. 

St. John had a twofold object in his Gospel and his 
Epistles : to prove the divinity, and also the actual 
human nature and bodily suffering, of Jesus Christ ; 
that he was God and Man. The notion that the effu- 
sion of blood and water from the Saviour's side was 
intended to prove the real death of the sufferer, origi- 
nated,! believe, with some modern Germans, and seems 
to me ridiculous : there is, indeed, a very small quan- 
tity of water occasionally in the praecordia ; but in the 
pleura, where wounds are not generally mortal, there 
is a great deal. St. John did not mean, I apprehend, 
to insinuate that the spear-thrust made the death, merely 
as such, certain or evident, but that the effusion showed 
the human nature. " I saw it," he would say, " with 
my own eyes. It was real blood, composed of lymph 
and crassamentum, and not a mere celestial ichor, as 
the Phantasmists allecre." 



I think the verse of the three witnesses (1 John, v., 7) 
spurious ; not only because the balance of external au- 
thority is against it, as Porson seems to have shown, 
but also because, in my way of looking at it, it spoils 
the reasoning. 



St. John's logic is Oriental, and consists chiefly in 
position and parallel, while St. Paul displays all the 
intricacies of the Greek system. 



Whatever may be thought of the genuineness or au- 
thority of any part of the book of Daniel, it makes no 
difference in my belief in Christianity; for Christianity 
is within a man, even as he is a being gifted with rea- 
son ; it is associated with your mother's chair, and with 
the first remembered tones of her blessed voice. 



OP S. T. COLERIDGE. 43 

I do not believe St. Paul to be the author of the 
Epistle to the Hebrews. Luther's conjecture is very 
probable, that it was by Apollos, an Alexandrian Jew. 
The plan is too studiously regular for St. Paul. It was 
evidently written during the yet existing glories of the 
Temple. For three hundred years the church did not 
affix St. Paul's name to it ; but its apostolical or catho- 
lic character, independently of its genuineness as to St. 
Paul, was never much doubted. 



The first three Gospels show the history, that is, 
the fulfilment of the prophecies, in the facts. St. John 
declares explicitly the doctrine, oracularly, and without 
comment, because, being pure reason, it can only be 
proved by itself. For Christianity proves itself, as the 
sun is seen by its own light. Its evidence is involved 
in its existence. St. Paul writes more particularly for 
the dialectic understanding ; and proves those doctrines 
which were capable of such proof by common logic. 



St. John used the term 5 Aoyo^ technically. Philo- 
Judeeus had so used it several years before the probable 
date of the composition of this Gospel ; and it was 
commonly understood among the Jewish Rabbis at that 
time, and afterward, of the manifested God. 



Our translators, unfortunately, as I think, render the 
clause TTpoi rov ©gov,* " with God ;" that would be right 
if the Greek were oi/v rs> Qsw. By the preposition 
TTPoi, in this place, is meant the utmost possible prox- 
imity, without confusion ; likeness, without sameness. 
The Jewish Church understood the Messiah to be a 
divine person. Philo expressly cautions against any 
one's supposing the Logos to be a mere personification 
or symbol. He says, the Logos is a substantial, self- 
existent Being. The Gnostics, as they were afterward 
called, were a kind of Arians ; and thought the Logos 
was an afte'r-birth. They placed "aCws-o-oc and S/yd (the 

* John, ch. i., V. 1, 2. 



44 TABLE-TALK 

Abyss and Silence) before him. Therefore it was that 
St. John said, with emphasis, e* a ^yri vv h Aoyoq — " In 
the beginning was the Word." He was begotten in 
the first simultaneous burst of Godhead, if such an 
expression may be pardoned, in speaking of eternal 
existence. 



The understanding suggests the materials of reason- 
ing : the reason decides upon them. The first can only 
say, This is^ or ought to be so. The last says, It 
must be so.* 



April 27, 1823. 

Kean — Sir James Mackintosh — Sir H. Davy — Robert 
Smith — Canning — National Debt — Poor-Laws. 

Kean is original ; but he copies from himself. His 
rapid descents from the hyper-tragic to the infra-collo- 
quial, though sometimes productive of great effect, are 
often unreasonable. To see him act, is like reading 
Shakspeare by flashes of lightning. I do not think him 
thorough-bred gentleman enough to play Othello. 

Sir James Mackintosh is the king of the men of 
talent. He is a most elegant converser. How well I 
remember his giving breakfast to me and Sir Humphry 
Davy, at that time an unknown young man, and our 
having a very spirited talk about Locke and Newton, 
and so forth ! When Davy was gone, Mackintosh said 
to me, " That's a very extraordinary young man ; but 

* I have preserved this, and several other equivalent remarks, 
out of a dutiful wish to popularize, by all the honest means in 
my power, this fundamental distinction ; a thorough mastery of 
which Mr. Coleridge considered necessary to any sound system 
of psychology ; and in the denial or neglect of which, he delighted 
to point out the source of most of the vulgar errors in philosophy 
and religion. The distinction itself is implied throughout almost 
all Mr. C.'s works, whether in verse or prose ; but it may be 
found minutely argued in the " Aids to Reflection," p. 206, &c. 
2d edit., 1831.— Ed. 



OF S. T. COLERIDGE. 45 

he is gone wrong on some points." But Davy was, at 
that time at least, a man of genius ; and I doubt if 
Mackintosh ever heartily appreciated an eminently 
original man. He is uncommonly powerful in his own 
line ; but it is not the line of a first-rate man. After 
all his fluency and brilliant erudition, you can rarely 
carry off' any thing worth preserving. You might not 
improperly write on his forehead, " Warehouse to let !" 
He always dealt too much in generalities for a lawyer. 
He is deficient in power in applying his principles to 
the points in debate. I remember Robert Smith had 
much more logical ability ; but Smith aimed at con- 
quest by any gladiatorial shift ; whereas Mackintosh 
was uniformly candid in argument. I am speaking 
now from old recollections. 



Canning is very irritable, surprisingly so for a wit 
who is always giving such hard knocks. He should 
have put on an ass's skin before he went into parlia- 
ment. Lord Liverpool is the single stay of this min- 
istry ; but he is not a man of a directing mind. He 
cannot ride on the whirlwind. He serves as the isth- 
mus to connect one half of the cabinet with the other. 
He always gives you the common sense of the matter, 
and in that it is that his strength in debate lies. 



The national debt has, in fact, made more men rich 
than have a right to be so, or, rather, any ultimate 
power, in case of a struggle, of actualizing their riches. 
It is, in effect, like an ordinary, where three hundred 
tickets have been distributed, but where there is, in 
truth, room only for one hundred. So long as you can 
amuse the company with any thing else, or make them 
come in successively, all is well, and the whole three 
hundred fancy themselves sure of a dinner ; but if any 
suspicion of a hoax should arise, and they were all to 
rush into the room at once, there would be two hun- 
dred without a potato for their money ; and the table 
would be occupied by the landholders, who live on 
the spot. 



46 TABLE-TALK 

Poor-laws are the inevitable accompaniments of an 
extensive commerce and a manufacturing system. ^In 
Scotland they did without them, till Glasgow and Pais- 
ley became great manufacturing places, and then peo- 
ple said, " We must subscribe for the poor, or else we 
shall have poor-laws." That is to say, they enacted 
for themselves a poor-law in order to avoid having a 
poor-law enacted for them. It is absurd to talk of 
Queen Elizabeth's act as creating the poor-laws of this 
country. The poor-rates are the consideration paid 
by, or on behalf of, capitalists, for having labour at de- 
mand. It is the price, and nothing else. The hard- 
ship consists in the agricultural interest having to pay 
an undue proportion of the rates ; for although, per- 
haps, in the end, the land becomes more valuable, yet, 
at the first, the land-owners have to bear all the brunt. 
I think there ought to be a fixed revolving period for 
the equalization of rates. 



April 28, 1823. 

Conduct of the Whigs — Reform of the House of Com.' 
mons. 

The conduct of the Whigs is extravagantly incon- 
sistent. It originated in the fatal error which Fox 
committed, in persisting, after the first three years of 
the French revolution, when every shadow of freedom 
in France had vanished, in eulogizing the men and 
measures of that shallow-hearted people. So he went 
on gradually, further and further departing from all the 
principles of English policy and wisdom, till at length 
he became the panegyrist, through thick and thin, 
of a military phrensy, under the influence of which the 
very name of liberty was detested. And thus it was 
that, in course of time. Fox's party became the abso- 
lute abetters of the Bonapartean invasion of Spain, 
and did all in their power to thwart the generous ef- 
forts of this country to resist it. Now, when the inva- 



OP S. T. COLERIDGE. 47 

sion is by a Bourbon, and the cause of the Spanish na- 
tion neither united, nor, indeed, sound in many respects, 
the Whigs would precipitate this country into a cru- 
sade to tight up the cause of a faction. 

I have the honour of being slightly known to my lord 
Darnley. In 1808-9, 1 met him accidentally, when, af- 
ter a few words of salutation, he said to me, " Are you 
mad, Mr. Coleridge ?" — " Not that I know, my lord," I 
replied ; " what have I done which argues any derange- 
ment of mind ?" — " Why, I mean," said he, " those es- 
says of yours ' On the Hopes and Fears of a People 
invaded by foreign Armies.' The Spaniards are abso- 
lutely conquered ; it is absurd to talk of their chance 
of resisting." — " Very well, my lord," I said, " we 
shall see. But will your lordship permit me, in the 
course of a year or two, to retort your question 
upon you, if I should have grounds for so doing ?" — 
" Certainly !" said he ; " that is fair !" Two years 
afterward, when aifairs were altered in Spain, I met 
Lord Darnley again, and, after some conversation, ven- 
tured to say to him, " Does your lordship recollect giv- 
ing me leave to retort a certain question upon you about 
the Spaniards ? Who is mad now ?" — " Very true, very 
true, Mr. Coleridge," cried he ; " you are right. It is 
very extraordinary. It was a very happy and bold 
guess." Upon which I remarked, "I thmk ^ guess' is 
hardly a fair term. For has any thing happened that 
has happened, from any other causes, or under any 
other conditions, than such as I laid down before- 
hand ?" Lord Darnley, who was always very courte- 
ous to me, took this with a pleasant nod of his head. 



Many votes are given for reform in the House of 
Commons, which are not honest. While it is well 
known that the measure will not be carried in parlia- 
ment, it is as well to purchase some popularity by vo- 
ting for it. When Hunt and his associates, before the 
Six Acts, created a panic, the ministers lay on their 
t)ars for three or four months, until the general cry, 
even of the opposition, was, " Why don't the ministers 



48 TABLE-TALK 

come forward with some protective measm-e ?" The 
present ministry exists on the weakness and desperate 
character of the opposition. The sober part of the 
nation are afraid of the latter getting into power, lest 
they should redeem some of their pledges. 



April 29, 1823. 

Church of Rome. 

The present adherents of the church of Rome are 
not, in my judgment, Catholics. We are the Catho- 
lics. We can prove that we hold the doctrines of the 
primitive church for the first three hundred years. 
The Council of Trent made the Papists what they are.* 
A foreign Romish bishopt has declared, that the Prot- 
estants of his acquaintance were more like what he 
conceived the enlightened Catholics to have been be- 
fore the Council of Trent, than the best of the latter in 
his days. Perhaps you will say, this bishop was not 
a good Catholic. I cannot answer for that. The 
course of Christianity and the Christian church may 
not unaptly be likened to a mighty river, which filled 
a wide channel, and bore along with its waters mud, 
and gravel, and weeds, till it met a great rock in the 
middle of its stream. By some means or other, the 
water flows purely, and separated from the filth, in a 
deeper and narrower course on one side of the rock, 
and the refuse of the dirt and troubled water goes oflf 
on the other in a broader current, and then cries out, 
" We are the river !" 



A person said to me lately, " But you will, for ci- 
vility's sake, call them Catholics, will you not ?" I an- 
swered, that I would not ; for I would not tell a lie 
upon any, much less upon so solemn an occasion. 

* See Aids to Reflection, p. 180, note. 

+ Mr. Coleridge named him, but the name was strange to me, 
and I have been unable to recover it. — Ed. 



OP S. T. COLERIDGE. 49 

The adherents of the church of Rome, I repeat, are 
not Catholic Christians. If they are, then it follows 
that we Protestants are heretics and schismatics, as, 
indeed, the Papists very logically, from their own pre- 
mises, call us. And " Roman Catholics" makes no 
difference. Catholicism is not capable of degrees or 
local apportionments. There can be but one body of 
Catholics, ex vi termini. To talk strictly of Irish or 
Scotch Roman Catholics is a mere absurdity. 



It is common to hear it said, that, if the legal disa- 
bilities are removed, the Romish church will lose 
ground in this country. I think the reverse : the Ro- 
mish religion is, or, in certain hands, is capable of be- 
ing made, so flattering to the passions and self-delu- 
sions of men, that it is impossible to say how far it 
would spread, among the higher orders of society espe- 
cially, if the secular disadvantages now attending its 
profession were removed.* 



April 30, 1823. 

Zendavesta — Pantheism and Idolatry. 

The Zendavesta must, I think, have been copied in 
parts from the writings of Moses. In the description 
of the creation, the first chapter of Genesis is taken 
almost literally, except that the sun is created before 
the light, and then the herbs and the plants after the 
sun ; which are precisely the two points they did not 
understand, and therefore altered as errors. t 

* Here, at least, the prophecy has been fulfilled. The wisdom 
of our ancestors, in the reign of King WilUam III., would have 
been jealous of the daily increase in the numbers of the Romish 
church in England, of which every attentive observer must be 
aware. See Sancii Dominici Pallium, in vol. ii., p. 80, of Mr. 
Coleridge's poems. — Ed. 

t The Zend, or Zendavesta, is the sacred book ascribed to 
Zoroaster, or Zerdusht, the founder or reformer of the Magian 
religion. The modern edition or paraphrase of this work, called 

Vol. L— C 5 



60 TABLE-TALK 

There are only two acts of creation, properly so 
called, in the Mosaic account — the material universe 
and man. The intermediate acts seem more as the 
results of secondary causes, or, at any rate, of a modi- 
fication of prepared materials. 



Pantheism and idolatry naturally end in each other ; 
for all extremes meet. The Judaic religion is the 
exact medium, the true compromise. 



May 1, 1823 

Difference between Stories of Dreams and Ghosts — 
Phantom Portrait — Witch of Endor — Socinianism. 

There is a great difference in the credibility to be 
attached to stories of dreams and stories of ghosts. 
Dreams have nothing in them which is absurd and 
nonsensical ; and, though most of the coincidences 
may be readily explained by the diseased system of 
the dreamer, and the great and surprising power of as- 
sociation, yet it is impossible to say whether an inner 
sense does not really exist in the mind, seldom de- 
veloped, indeed, but which may have a power of pre- 
sentiment.* All the external senses have their cor- 

the Sadda, written in the Persian of the day, was, I believe, com- 
posed about three hundred years ago. — Ed. 

* See this point suggested and reasoned with extraordinary 
subtlety in the third essay, marked (C), in the Appendix to the 
Statesman's Manual, or first Lay Sermon, p. 19, &,c. One beau- 
tiful paragraph I will venture to quote : — " Not only may we 
expect that men of strong religious feelings, but little religious 
knowledge, will occasionally be tempted to regard such occur- 
rences as supernatural visitations ; but it ought not to surprise 
us if such dreams should sometimes be confirmed by the event, as 
though they had actually possessed a character of divination. For 
who shall decide how far a perfect reminiscence of past experi- 
ences (of many, perhaps, that had escaped our reflex conscious- 
ness at the time) — who shall determine to what extent this repro- 
ductive imagination, unsophisticated by the will, and undistracted 
by intrusions from the senses, may or may not be concentred and 
sublimed into foresight and presentiment 1 There would be noth- 



OP S. T. COLERIDGE. 51 

respondents in the mind ; the eye can see an object 
before it is distinctly apprehended ; — why may there 
not be a corresponding power in the soul ? The 
power of prophecy might have been merely a spiritual 
excitation of this dormant faculty. Hence you will 
observe that the Hebrew seers sometimes seem to 
have required music. Every thing in nature has a 
tendency to move in cycles ; and it would be a miracle 
if, out of such myriads of cycles moving concurrently, 
some coincidences did not take place. No doubt, 
many such take place in the daytime ; but then our 
senses drive out the remembrance of them, and render 
the impression hardly felt ; but when we sleep, the 
mind acts without interruption. Terror and the heated 
imagination will, even in the daytime, create all sorts 
of features, shapes, and colours, out of a single object, 
possessing none of them in reality, 

But ghost stories are absurd. Whenever a real 
ghost appears — by which I mean some man or woman 
dressed up to frighten another — if the supernatural 
character of the apparition has been for a moment be- 
lieved, the effects on the spectator have always been 
most terrible — convulsion, idiocy, madness, or even 
death on the spot. Consider the awful descriptions in 
the Old Testament of the effects of a spiritual presence 
on the prophets and seers of the Hebrews ; the terror, 
the exceeding great dread, the utter loss of all animal 
power. But in our common ghost stories, you always 
find that the seer, after a most appalling apparition, as 
you are to believe, is quite well the next day. Per- 
haps he may have a headache ; but that is the outside 
of the effect produced. Alston, a man of genius, and 
the best painter yet produced by America, when he 
was in England, told me an anecdote which confirms 
what I have been saying. It was, I think, in the Uni- 
versity of Cambridge, near Boston, that a certain youth 

ing herein either to foster superstition on the one hand, or to jus- 
tify contemptuous disbelief on the other. Incredulity is but Cre- 
dulity seen from behind, bowing and nodding assent to the Habit- 
ual and the Fashionable." — En. 
02 



52 TABLE-TALK 

took it into his wise head to endeavour to convert a 
Tom-Painish companion of his by appearing as a 
ghost before him. He accordingly dressed himself up 
in the usual way, having previously extracted the ball 
from the pistol which always lay near the head of his 
friend's bed. Upon first awaking, and seeing the ap- 
parition, the youth who was to be frightened. A., very 
coolly looked his companion, the ghost, in the face, 
and said, " I know you. This is a good joke ; but you 
see I am not frightened. Now you may vanish I" 
The ghost stood still. " Come," said A., " that is 
enough. I shall get angry. Away !" Still the ghost 

moved not. " By ," ejaculated A., " if you do not 

in three minutes go away, I'll shoot you." He waited 
the time, deliberately levelled the pistol, fired, and, 
with a scream at the immobility of the figure, became 
convulsed, and afterward died. The very instant he 
believed it to he a ghost, his human nature fell be- 
fore it. 



*"Last Thursday my uncle, S. T. C, dined with 

us, and and came to meet him. I have 

heard him more brilliant, but he was very fine, and de- 
lighted both and very much. It is im- 
possible to carry off, or to commit to paper, his long 
trains of argument ; indeed, it is not always possible to 
understand them, he lays the foundation so deep, and 
views every question in so original a manner. Nothing 
can be finer than the principles which he lays down in 
morals and religion. His deep study of Scripture is 

very astonishing; and were but as 

children in his hands, not merely in general views of 
theology, but in nice verbal criticism. He thinks it 
clear that St. Paul did not write the Epistle to the 
Hebrews, but that it must have been the work of some 
Alexandrian Greek, and he thinks Apollos. It seemed 



* What follows in the text within commas was written about 
this time, and communicated to me by my brother, John Taylor 
Coleridge. 



OP S. T. COLERIDGE. 68 

to him a desirable thing for Christianity that it should 
have been written by some other person than St. Paul ; 
because, its inspiration being unquestioned, it added 
another independent teacher and expounder of the faith. 

" We fell upon ghosts, and he exposed many of the 
stories physically and metaphysically. He seemed to 
think it impossible that you should really see with the 
bodily eye what was impalpable, unless it were a 
shadow ; and if what you fancied you saw with the 
bodily eye was in fact only an impression on the 
imagination, then you were seeing something out of 
your senses, and your testimony was full of uncertainty. 
He observed how uniformly, in all the best-attested 
stories of spectres, the appearance might be accounted 
for from the disturbed state of the mind or body of the 
seer, as in the instances of Dion and Brutus. Upon 

's saying that he wished to believe these stories 

true, thinking that they constituted a useful subsidiary 
testimony of another state of existence ; Mr. C. differ- 
ed, and said he thought it a dangerous testimony, and 
one not wanted : it was Saul, with the Scriptures and 
the Prophet before him, calling upon the witch of En- 
dor to certify him of the truth ! He explained very 
ingeniously, yet very natm-ally, what has often startled 
people in ghost stories — such as Lord Lyttelton's — 
namely, that when a real person has appeared, habited 
like tlie phantom, the ghost-seer has immediately seen 
two, the real man and the phantom. He said that such 
must be the case. The man under the morbid delu- 
sion sees with the eye of the imagination, and sees 
with the bodily eye too ; if no one were really present, 
he would see the spectre with one, and the bed-cur- 
tains with the other. When, therefore, a real person 
comes, he sees the req-l man as he would have seen 
anyone else in the same place, and he sees the spectre 
not a whit the less : being perceptible by different 
powers of vision, so to say, the appearances do not in- 
terfere with each other. 

" He told us the following story of the Phantom 
Portrait : — 



54 TABLE-TALK 

* " A Stranger came recommended to a merchant's 
house at Lubeck. He was hospitably received ; but, 
the house being full, he was lodged at night in an apart- 
ment handsomely furnished, but not often used. There 
was nothing that struck him particularly in the room 
when left alone, till he happened to cast his eyes on a 
picture, which immediately arrested his attention. It 
was a single head ; but there was something so un- 
common, so frightful and unearthly, in its expression, 
though by no means ugly, that he found himself ir- 
resistibly attracted to look at it. In fact, he could not 
tear himself from the fascination of this portrait, till his 
imagination was filled by it, and his rest broken. He 
retired to bed, dreamed, and awoke from time to time, 
with the head glaring on him. In the morning, his 
host saw by his looks that he had slept ill, and inqui- 
red the cause, which was told. The master of the 
house was much vexed, and said that the picture ought 
lo have been removed ; that it was an oversight ; and 
that it always was removed when the chamber was 
used. The picture, he said, was, indeed, terrible to 
every one ; but it was so fine, and had come into the 
family in so curious a way, that he could not make up 
his mind to part with it, or to destroy it. The story 
of it was this : — ' My father,' said he, ' was at Ham- 
burgh on business, and while dining at a coffee-house, 
he observed a young man of a remarkable appearance 
enter, seat himself alone in a corner, and commence a 
solitary meal. His countenance bespoke the extreme 
of mental distress, and every now and then he turned 
his head quickly round, as if he heard something, then 
shudder, grow pale, and go on with his meal after an 
effort as before. My father saw this same man at the 
same place for two or three successive days, and at 
length became so much interested about him, that he 
spoke to him. The address was not repulsed, and the 

* This is the story which Mr. Washington Irving has dressed 
up very prettily in the first volume of his " Tales of a Travel- 
ler," pp. 84 — 119; professing in his preface that he could not 
remember whence he had derived the anecdote. — Ed. 



OF S. T. COLERIDGE. SS^ 

Stranger seemed to find some comfort in the tone of 
sympathy and kindness which ray father used. He 
was an Italian, well informed, poor, but not destitute, 
and living economically upon the profits of his art as a 
painter. Their intimacy increased ; and at length the 
Italian, seeing my father's involuntary emotion at his 
convulsive turnings and shudderings, which continued 
as formerly, interrupting their conversation from time 
to time, told him his story. He was a native of Rome, 
and had lived in some familiarity with, and been much 
patronised by, a young nobleman ; but upon some 
slight occasion they had fallen out, and his patron, be- 
sides using many reproachful expressions, had struck 
him. The painter brooded over the disgrace of the 
blow. He could not challenge the nobleman, on ac- 
count of his rank ; he therefore watched for an oppor- 
tunity, and assassinated him. Of course he fled from 
his comitry, and finally had reached Hamburgh. He 
had not, however, passed many weeks from the night 
of the murder, before one day, in the crowded street, 
he heard his name called by a voice familiar to him : 
he turned short round, and saw the face of his victim 
looking at him with a fixed eye. From that moment 
he had no peace : at all hours, in all places, and amidst 
all companies, however engaged he might be, he heard 
the voice, and could never help looking round ; and, 
whenever he so looked round, he always encountered 
the same face staring close upon him. At last, in a 
mood of desperation, he had fixed himself face to face, 
and eye to eye, and deliberately drawn the phantom 
visage as it glared upon him ; and this was the picture 
so drawn. The Italian said he had struggled long, but 
life was a burden which he could now no longer bear ; 
and he was resolved, when he had made money enough 
to return to Rome, to surrender himself to justice, and 
expiate his crime on the scaffold. He gave the fin- 
ished picture to my father, in return for the kindness 
which he had shown to him.' " 



I have no doubt that the Jews believed generally in 



56 TABLE-TALK 

a future state, independently of the Mosaic law. The 
story of the witch of Endor is a proof of it. What 
we translate " witch,'^ or " familiar spirit," is, in the 
Hebrew, Ob, that is, a bottle or bladder, and means a 
person whose belly is swelled like a bottle by divine 
inflation. In the Greek it is iyyccTrptf^vSog, a ventrilo- 
quist. The text (1 Sam., ch. xxviii.) is a simple rec- 
ord of the facts, the solution of which the sacred his- 
torian leaves to the reader. I take it to have been a 
trick of ventriloquism, got up by the courtiers and 
friends of Saul, to prevent him, if possible, from haz- 
arding an engagement with an army despondent and 
oppressed with bodings of defeat. Saul is not said to 
have seen Samuel ; the woman only pretends to see 
him. And then what does this Samuel do ? He merely 
repeats the prophecy known to all Israel, which the 
true Samuel had uttered some years before. Read 
Captain Lyon's account of the scene in the cabin with 
the Esquimaux bladder, or conjurer ; it is impossible 
not to be reminded of the witch of Endor. I recom- 
mend you also to look at Webster's admirable treatise 
on Witchcraft. 



The pet texts of a Socinian are quite enough for his 
confutation with acute thinkers. If Christ had been a 
mere man, it would have been ridiculous in him to call 
himself " the Son of man ;" but being God and man, 
it then became, in his own assumption of it, a peculiar 
and mysterious title. So, if Christ had been a mere 
man, his saying, " My Father is greater than I," (John, 
XV., 28) would have been as unmeaning. It would be 
laughable enough, for example, to hear me say, " My 
* Remorse' succeeded, indeed ; but Shakspeare is a 
greater dramatist than I." But how immeasurably 
more foolish, more monstrous, would it not be for a 
man, however honest, good, or wise, to say, " But Je- 
hovah is greater than I !" 



OF S. T. COLERIDGE. 57 

May 8, 1824. 

Plato and Xenophon — Religions of the Greeks — Egyp- 
tian Antiquities — Milton — Virgil. 

Plato's works are logical exercises for the mind. 
Little that is positive is advanced in them. Socrates 
may be fairly represented by Plato in the more moral 
parts ; but in all the metaphysical disquisitions it is 
Pythagoras. Xenophon's representation of his master 
is quite different. 

Observe the remarkable contrast between the reli- 
gion of the tragic and other poets of Greece. The 
former are always opposed in heart to the popular di- 
vinities. In fact, there are the popular, the sacerdotal, 
and the mysterious religions of Greece, represented 
roughly by Homer, Pindar, and ^Eschylus. The an- 
cients had no notion of a fall of man, though they had 
of his gradual degeneracy. Prometheus, in the old 
mythus, and for the most part in iEschylus, is the Re- 
deemer and the devil jumbled together. 



I cannot say I expect much from mere Egyptian an- 
tiquities. Every thing really, that is, intellectually, 
great in that country seems to me of Grecian origin. 

I think nothing can be added to Milton's definition 
or rule of poetry, — that it ought to be simple, sensuous, 
and impassioned ; that is to say, single in conception, 
abounding in sensible images, and informing them all 
with the spirit of the mind. 

Milton's Latin style is, I think, better and easier than 
his English. His style in prose is quite as character- 
istic of him as a philosophic republican, as Cowley's 
is of him as a first-rate gentleman. 

If you take from Virgil his diction and metre, what 
do you leave him 1 

C3 



68 TABLE-TALK 

June 2, 1824. 

Granville Penn and the Deluge — Rainbow. 

I CONFESS I have small patience with Mr. Granville 
Penn's book against Buckland. Science will be super- 
seded, if every phenomenon is referred in this manner 
to an actual miracle. I think it absurd to attribute so 
much to the Deluge. An inundation, which left an 
olive-tree standing, and bore up the ark peacefully on 
its bosom, could scarcely have been the sole cause of 
the rents and dislocations observable on the face of the 
earth. How could the tropical animals, which have 
been discovered in England and in Russia in a perfectly 
natural state, have been transported thither by such a 
flood ? Those animals must evidently have been natives 
of the countries in which they have been found. The 
climates must have been altered. Assume a sudden 
evaporation upon the retiring of the Deluge to have 
caused an intense cold, the solar heat might not be suf- 
ficient afterward to overcome it. I do not think that 
the polar cold is adequately explained by mere com- 
parative distance from the sun. 



You will observe, that there is no mention of rain 
previously to the Deluge. Hence it may be inferred that 
the rainbow was exhibited for the first time after God's 
covenant with Noah. However, I only suggest this. 



The Earth, with its scarred face, is the symbol of 
the Past ; the Air and Heaven, of Futurity. 



June 5, 1824. 

English and Greek Dancing — Greek Acoustics. 

The fondness for dancing in English women is the 
reaction of their reserved manners. It is the only 
way in which they can throw themselves forth in nat- 
ural liberty. We have no adequate conception of the 



OF S. T. COLERIDGE. 69 

perfection of the ancient tragic dance. The pleasure 
which the Greeks received from it had for its basis Dif- 
ference ; and the more unfit the vehicle, the more 
lively was the curiosity and intense the delight at seeing 
the difficulty overcome. 

The ancients certainly seem to have understood 
some principles in acoustics which we have lost, or, 
at least, they applied them better. They contrived 
to convey the voice distinctly in their huge theatres 
by means of pipes, which created no echo or confu- 
sion. Our theatres — Drury Lane and Covent Garden 
— are fit for nothing : they are too large for acting, and 
too small for a bull-fight. 



June 7, 1824. 

Lord Byron'' s Versification^ and Don Juan. 

How lamentably the art of versification is neglected 
by most of the poets of the present day ! — by Lord 
Byron, as it strikes me, in particular, among those of 
eminence for other qualities. Upon the whole, I think 
the part of Don Juan in which Lambro's return to his 
home, and Lambro himself, are described, is the best, 
that is, the most individual thing, in all I know of Lord 
B.'s works. The festal abandonment puts one in mind 
of Nicholas Poussin's pictures.* 

* Mr. Coleridge particularly noticed, for its classical air, the 
32d stanza of this Canto (the third) : — 

" A band of children, round a snow-white ram, 

There wreath his venerable horns with flowers, 
While, peaceful as if still an unwean'd lamb, 

The patriarch of the flock all gently cowers 
His sober head, majestically tame, 

Or eats from out the palm, or playful lowers 
His brow, as if in act to butt, and then, 
Yielding to their small hands, draws back again." 
But Mr. C. said that then and again made no rhyme to his ear. 
Why should not the old form agen be lawful in verse 1 We wil- 
fully abridge ourselves of the liberty which our great poets achieved 
and sanctioned for us in innumerable instances. — Ed. 



60 



TABLE-TALK 



June 10, 1824. 

Parental Control in Marriage — Marriage of CoWsina 
— Difference of Character. 

Up to twenty-one, I hold a father to have power over 
his children as to marriage ; after that age, authority 
and influence only. Show me one couple unhappy 
merely on account of their limited circumstances, and 
I will show you ten who are wretched from other 
causes. 



If the matter were quite open, I should incline to 
disapprove the marriage of first cousins ; but the church 
has decided otherwise on the authority of Augustine, 
and that seems enough upon such a point. 



You may depend upon it, that a slight contrast of 
character is very material to happixiess in marriage. 



February 24, 1827. 

Blumenbach and Kant's Races — lapetic and Semit 
Hebrew — Solomon. 

Blumenbach makes five races ; Kant, three. Blu- 
menbach's scale of dignity may be thus figured : — 

1. 

Caucasian or European. 



2. Malay. — 



3. Negro. 



— 2. American. 



3. Mongolian— Asiatic. 



OF S. T. COLERIDGE. 61 

There was, I conceive, one great lapetic original of 
language, under which Greek, Latin, and other Eu- 
ropean dialects, and perhaps Sanscrit, range as spe- 
cies. The lapetic race, 'laove?, separated into two 
branches ; one, with a tendency to migrate southwest 
— Greeks, Italians, &c. ; and the other, northwest — - 
Goths, Germans, Swedes, &c. The Hebrew is Se- 
mitic. 



Hebrew, in point of force and purity, seems at its 
height in Isaiah. It is most corrupt in Daniel, and 
not much less so in Ecclesiastes, which I cannot be- 
lieve to have been actually composed by Solomon, but 
rather suppose to have been so attributed by the Jews, 
in their passion for ascribing all works of that sort to 
their grand monarqiie. 



March 10, 1827. 

Jewish History — Spinozistic and Hebrew Schemes. 

The people of all other nations but the Jewish seem 
to look backward, and also to exist for the present ; 
but in the Jewish scheme every thing is prospective 
and preparatory ; nothing, however trifling, is done for 
itself alone, but all is typical of something yet to come. 



I would rather call the book of Proverbs Solomon- 
ian than as actually a work of Solomon's. So I appre- 
hend many of the Psalms to be Davidical only, not 
David's own compositions. 



You may state the Pantheism of »Spinosa, in contrast 
with the Hebrew or Christian scheme, shortly, as 
thus : — 

Spinosism. 
W — G = ; i.e. The World without God is an 

impossible idea. 
G — W = ; i.e. God without the World is so 
likewise. 
6 



62 > TABLE-TALK 

Hebrew or Christian scheme. 
W — G = ; i, e. The same as Spinosa's pre- 
miss. 
But G — W = G ; I. e. God without the World is God 
the self-subsistent. 



March 12, 1827 

Roman Catholics — Energy of Man and other Anhnals 
' — Shakspeare in Minimis — Paul Sarpi — Bartram^s 
Travels. 

I HAVE no doubt that the real object closest to the 
hearts of the leading Irish Romanists is the destruction 
of the Irish Protestant church, and the re-establishment 
of their own. I think more is involved in the manner 
than the matter of legislating upon the civil disabilities 
of the members of the church of Rome ; and, for one, 
I should be willing to vote for a removal of those dis- 
abilities, with two or three exceptions, upon a solemn 
declaration being made legislatively in parliament, that 
at no time, nor under any circumstances, could or should 
a branch of the Romish hierarchy, as at present con- 
stituted, become an estate of this realm.* 



Internal or mental energy, and external or corporeal 
modificability, are in inverse proportions. In man, in- 
ternal energy is greater than in any other animal ; and 
you will see that he is less changed by climate than 
any animal. For the highest and lowest specimens 
of man are not one half as much apart from each other 
as the different kinds even of dogs, animals of great 
internal energy themselves. 

For an instance of Shakspeare's power in minimis^ I 
generally quote James Gurney's character in King 
John. How individual and comical he is with the four 

* See Church and State, second part, p. 189. 



OF S. T. COLERIDGE. 63 

words allowed to his dramatic life !* And pray look 
at Skelton's Richard Sparrow also ! 



Paul Sarpi's History of the Council of Trent de- 
serves your study. It is very interesting. 

The latest book of travels I know, written in the 
spirit of the old travellers, is Bartram's account of his 
tour in the Floridas. It is a work of high merit ever 
way.f 



March 13, 1827. 

The Understanding, 

A PUN will sometimes facilitate explanation ; as thus, 
— the understanding is that which stands under the 
phenomenon, and gives it objectivity. You know what 
a thing is by it. It is also worthy of remark, that the 

* " Enter Lady Falconbridge and James Gorney. 
Bast. me ! it is my mother : — How now, good lady ! 
What brings you here to court so hastily] 

Lady F. Where is that slave, thy brother? where is he 1 
That holds in chase mine honour up and downl 

Bast. My brother Robert "? Old Sir Robert's son 1 
Colbrand the giant, that same mighty man"? 
Is it Sir Robert's son that you seek so 1 

Lady F. Sir Robert's son ! Ay, thou unreverend boy, 
Sir Robert's son : why scorn'st thou at Sir Robert '? 
He is Sir Robert's son, and so art thou. 

Bast. James Gurney, wilt thou give us leave a while \ 
GuR. Good leave, good Philip. 
Bast. Philip"! — Sparrow! James, 
There's toys abroad ; anon I'll tell thee more. 

[Exit Gurney." 
The very exit Gurney is a stroke of James's character. — Ed. 
t" Travels through North and South Carolina, Georgia, East 
and West Florida, the Cherokee Country, the extensive Territo- 
ries of the Muscogulges, or Creek Confederacy, and the Country 
of the Choctaws, &c. By WiUiam Bartram." "Philadelphia, 1791. 
London, 1792, 8vo. The expedition was made at the request of 
Dr. Fothergill, the Quaker physician, in 1773, and was particu- 
larly directed to botanical discoveries. — Ed. 



64 TABLE-TALK 

Hebrew word for the understanding, Bineh^ comes from 
a root meaning between or distinguishing. 



March 18, 1827. 
Parts of Speech — Grammar. 
There are seven parts of speech, and they agree 
with the five grand and universal divisions into which 
all things finite, by which I mean to exclude the idea 
of God, will be found to fall ; that is, as you will often 
see it stated in my writings, especially in the Aids to 
Reflection : — * 

Prothesis. 
1. 
Thesis. Mesothesis. Antithesis. 

2. 4. 3. 

Synthesis. 
5. 
Conceive it thus : — 

1. Prothesis, the noun-verb, or verb-substantive, I 
am^ which is the previous form, and implies identity 
of being and act. 

^ Note, each of these may be 

2. Thesis, the noun. J converted ; that is, they 

3. Antithesis, the verb. \ are only opposed to each 

\ other. 

4. Mesothesis, the infinitive mood, or the indiffer- 
ence of the verb and noun, it being either the one or 
the other, or both at the same time, in different rela- 
tions. 

5. Synthesis, the participle, or the community of 
verb and noun. Being and acting at once. 

Now, modify the noun by the verb ; that is, by an 
act, and you have — 

6. The adnoun, or adjective. 

Modify the verb by the noun ; that is, by being, and 
you have — 

7. The adverb. 

* P. 170, 2d edition. 



OF S. T. COLERIDGE. 65 

Interjections are parts of sound, not of speech. Con- 
junctions are the same as prepositions ; but they are 
prefixed to a sentence, or to a member of a sentence, 
instead of to a single word. 

The inflections of nouns are modifications as to place ; 
the inflections of verbs, as to time. 

The genitive case denotes dependance ; the dative, 
transmission. It is absurd to talk of verbs governing. 
In Thucydides, I believe, every case has been found 
absolute.* 

The inflections of the tenses of a verb are formed 
by adjuncts of the verb-substantive. In Greek it is 
obvious. The E is the prefix significative of a past 
time.j 

* Nominative absolute : — StSv ie (pdBoi ?l avflpuiirajv v6nog oiotU 

arelpyt, rb /ifv Kpivovrti ev bjxo'm koL adSnv Koi [jitj ruy 6i a^apTt)- 

fidruiv ohSeli f\m^(ov /^^XP' '""'' '^"f'7*' ytveaOai. (iiovs «p ttjv ri/iwptav avri- 
SoZvai. — Thuc, li., 53. 

Dative : — tlpyofthoig avToig tj?? daXdacrjg Kai Kara yrjv nopdoviJiivois 
ivextiprjcrdv riveg irpds 'Adrivaiovi ayayiTv rriv wdXtv. — Thuc, viii., 24. 

This is the Latin usage. 

Accusative. — I do not remember an instance of the proper ac- 
cusative absolute in Thucydides ; but it seems not uncommon in 
other authors : — 

u ^dve, [lij ^avua^e irpbg rb \irapfs, 
T«v' tl (paviv/ ae^Tira firiKvvu) Xdyov. 

Soph. (Ed., C. 1119. 
Yet all such instances may be nominatives ; for I cannot find an 
example of the accusative absolute in the masculine or feminine 
gender, where the difference of inflection would show the case. — 
Ed. 

■f There is m existence a Greek grammar compiled by Mr. Cole- 
ridge, out of an old printed one, with much original matter, for 
the use of one of his children when very young. Some valuable 
parts of it will find a place in the collection of Mr. Coleridge's 
literary and critical remains, the preparing of which for the press 
has been committed to my care. But the almost incredible labour 
expended in this little work, of a kind not justifying publication, 
is a truly marvellous monument of minute logical accuracy and 
the tenderest parental love. — Ed. 
6* 



66 TABLE-TALK 

June 15, 1827. 

Magnetism — Electricity — Galvanism. 

Perhaps the attribution or analogy may seem fanci- 
ful at first sight ; but I am in the habit of realizing to 
myself Magnetism as length ; Electricity as breadth 
or surface ; and Galvanism as depth. 



June 24, 1827. 

Spenser — Character of Othello — Hamlet — Poloniris — 
Principles and Maxims — Love — Measure for Meas- 
ure — Ben Jonson — Beaumont and Fletcher — Version 
of the Bible — Spurzheim — Craniology. 

Spenser's Epithalamion is truly sublime ; and pray 
mark the swan-like movement of his exquisite Pro- 
thalamion.* His attention to metre and rhythm is 

* How well I remember this Midsummer-day ! I shall never 
pass such another. The sun was setting behind Caen Wood, and 
the calm of the evening was so exceedingly deep that it arrested 
Mr. Coleridge's attention. We were alone together in Mr. Gill- 
man's drawing-room, and Mr. C. left off talking, and fell into an 
almost trance-like state for ten minutes while contemplating the 
beautiful prospect before us. His eyes swam in tears, his head 
inclined a little forward, and there was a slight uplifting of the 
fingers, which seemed to tell me that he was in prayer. I was 
awe-stricken, and remained absorbed in looking at the man, in 
forgetfulness of external nature, when he recovered himself, and 
after a word or two fell by some secret link of association upon 
Spenser's poetry. Upon my telling him that I did not very well 
recollect the Prothalamion, " Then I must read you a bit of it," 
said he, and, fetching the book from the next room, he recited the 
whole of it in his finest and most musical manner. I particularly 
bear in mind the sensible diversity of tone and rhythm with which 
he gave : — 

" Sweet Thames ! run softly till I end my song," 

the concluding line of each of the ten strophes of the poem. 

When I look upon the scanty memorial which I have alone 
preserved of this afternoon's converse, I am tempted to burn these 
pages in despair. Mr. Coleridge talked a volume of criticism 
that day, which, printed verbatim as he spoke it, would have made 



OP S. T. COLERIDGE. 67 

sometimes so extremely mimite, as to be painful even 
to my ear ; and you know how highly I prize good 
versification. 



I have often told you that I do not think there is any 
jealousy, properly so called, in the character of Othel- 
lo. There is no predisposition to suspicion, which I 
take to be an essential term in the definition of the 
word. Desdemona very truly told Emilia that he was 
not jealous, that is, of a jealous habit, and he says so 
as truly of himself. lago's suggestions, you see, are 
quite new to him; they do not correspond with any 
thing of a like nature previously in his mind. If 
Desdemona had, in fact, been guilty, no one would 
have thought of Calling Othello's conduct that of a 
jealous man. He could not act otherwise than he did 
with the lights he had ; whereas jealousy can never be 
strictly right. See how utterly unlike Othello is to 
Leontes, in the Winter's Tale, or even to Leonatus, in 
Cymbeline ! The jealousy of the first proceeds from 
an evident trifle, and something like hatred is mingled 
with it ; and the conduct of Leonatus in accepting the 
wager, and exposing his wife to the trial, denotes a 
jealous temper already formed. 



Hamlet's character is the prevalence of the abstract- 
ing and generalizing habit over the practical. He 
does not want courage, skill, will, .or opportunity ; but 
every incident sets him thinking ; and it is curious, 
and, at the same time, strictly natural, that Hamlet, 
who all the play seems reason itself, should be im- 
pelled, at last, by mere accident, to effect his object. I 
have a smack of Hamlet myself, if I may say so. 

A Maxim is a conclusion upon observation of mat- 
ters of fact, and is merely retrospective : an Idea, or, 

the reputation of any other person but himself. He was, indeed, 
particularly brilliant and enchanting, and I left him at night so 
thoroughly magnetized, that I could not for two or three days after* 
ward reflect enough to put any thing on paper. — Ed. 



68 TA.BLE-TALK 

if you like, a Principle, carries knowledge within 
itself, and is prospective. Polonius is a man of max- 
ims. While he is descanting on matters of past ex 
perience, as in that excellent speech to Laertes before 
he sets out on his travels,* he is admirable ; but when 
he comes to advise or project, he is a mere dotard. 
You see, Hamlet, as the man of ideas, despises him. 



A man of maxims only is like a Cyclops with one 
eye, and that eye placed in the back of his head. 

In the scene with Ophelia, in the third act,t Hamlet 
is beginning with great and unfeigned tenderness ; but, 
perceiving her reserve and coyness, fancies there are 
some listeners, and then, to sustain his part, breaks out 
into all that coarseness. 



Love is the admiration and cherishing of the amiable 
qualities of the beloved person, upon the condition of 
yourself being the object of their action. The quali- 
ties of the sexes correspond. The man's courage is 
loved by the woman, whose fortitude again is coveted 
by the man. His vigorous intellect is answered by 
hor infallible tact.J 

♦ Act i., sc. 3. t Sc. 1. 

t Mr. Coleridge was a great master in the art of love, but he 
had not studied in Ovid's school. Hear his account of the mat- 
ter : — 

" Love, truly such, is itself not the most common thing in the 
world, and mutual love still less so. But that enduring personal 
attachment, so beautifully delineated by Erin's sweet melodist, 
and still more touchingly, perhaps, in the well-known ballad, 
' John Anderson, my Jo, John,' in addition to a depth and con- 
stancy of character of no every-day occurrence, supposes a pecu- 
liar sensibility and tenderness of nature ; a constitutional commu- 
nicativeness and utterance of heart and soul ; a delight in the de- 
tail of sympathy, in the outward and visible signs of the sacrament 
within, — to count, as it were, the pulses of the life of love. But, 
above all, it supposes a soul which, even in the pride and sum- 
mer-tide of life, even in the lustihood of health and strength, had 
felt oftenest and prized highest that which age cannot take away, 
and which in all our lovinga is the love ; I mean, that willing 



1 



OF S. T. COLERIDGE. 69 

Measure for Measure is the single exception to the 
delightfuhiess of Shakspeare's plays. It is a hateful 
work, although Shakspearian throughout. Our feel- 
ings of justice are grossly wounded in Angelo's escape. 
Isabella herself contrives to be unamiable, and Claudio 
is detestable. 



I am inclined to consider The Fox as the greatest 
of Ben .lonson's works. But his smaller works are 
full of poetry. 

Monsieur Thomas and the Little French Lawyer 
are great favourites of mine among Beaumont and 
Fletcher's plays. How those plays overflow with wit ! 
And yet I scarcely know a more deeply tragic scene 
anywhere than that in RoUo, in which Edith pleads 
for her father's life, and then, when she cannot pre- 
vail, rises up and imprecates vengeance on his mur- 
derer.* 

sense of the unsufRcingness of the self for itself, which predis- 
poses a generous nature to see, in the total being of another, the 
supplement and completion of its own ; that quiet perpetual seek- 
ing which the presence of the beloved object modulates, not sus- 
pends, where the heart mom.ently finds, and, finding again, seeks 
on ; lastly, when ' life's changeful orb has passed the full,' a con- 
firmed faith in the nobleness of humanity, thus brought home and 
pressed, as it were, to the very bosom of hourly experience ; it sup- 
poses, I say, a heartfelt reverence for worth, not the less deep 
because divested of its solemnity by habit, by familiarity, by mu- 
tual infirmities, and even by a feeling of modesty which will arise 
in delicate minds, when they are conscious of possessing the 
same, or the correspondent, excellence in their own characters. 
In short, there must be a mind, which, while it feels the beautiful 
and the excellent in the beloved as its own, and by right of love 
appropriates it, can call goodness its playfellow ; and dares 
make sport of time and infirmity, while, in the person of a ihou- 
sand-fcldly endeared partner, we feel for aged virtue the caressing 
fondness that belongs to the innocence of childhood, and repeat 
the same attentions and tender courtesies which had been dictated 
by the same affection to the same object when attired in feminine 
loveliness or in manly beauty." — (Poetical Works, vol. ii., p. 120 ) 
—Ed. 

* Act iii., sc. 1 : — 

^' RoLLO. Hew off her hands ! 



70 TABLE-TALK 

Our version of the Bible is to be loved and prized 
for this, as for a thousand other things, — that it has 
preserved a purity of meaning to many terms of natural 
objects. Without this holdfast, our vitiated imagina- 
tions would refine away language to mer-e abstractions. 
Hence the French have lost their poetical language ; 
and Blanco White says the same thing has happened 
to the Spanish. By-the-way, I must say dear Mr. 
Sotheby's translation, in the Georgics, of 

" Solve mares ; mitte in venerem pecuaria primus ;" 
" Loose the fierce savage to the genial bed ;" 
and 

" Frigidus in venerem senior ;"* 

" Nor urge reluctant to laborious Zo^e" — 

are the most ludicrous instances I remember of the 
modern slip-slop. 



I have the perception of individual images very 
strong, but a dim one of the relation of place. I re- 
member the man or the tree, but where I saw them I 
mostly forget. t 

Hamond. Lady, hold off ! 

Edith. No ! hew 'em ; 

Hew off my innocent hands, as he commands you ! 
They'll hang the faster on for death's convulsion. — 
Thou seed of rocks, will nothing move thee, then 1 
Are all my tears lost, all my righteous prayers 
Drown'd in thy driinken wrath 1 I stand up thus, then, 
Thou boldly bloody tyrant, 

And to thy face, in heav'n's high name defy thee ! 
And may sweet mercy, when thy soul sighs for it, — 
When under thy black mischiefs thy flesh trembles, — 
When neither strength, nor youth, nor friends, nor gold, 
Can stay one hour ; when thy most wretched conscience, 

Waked from her dream of death, like fire shall melt thee 

When all thy mother's tears, thy brother's wounds, 

Thy people's fears, and curses, and my loss. 

My aged father's loss, shall stand before thee 

RoLLO. Save him, I say ; run, save him, save her father ; 
Fly and redeem his head ! 

Edith. May then that pity," &c. 

* Virg. Georg., iii., 64, and 97. 
t There was no man whose opinion in morals, or even'in a 



I 



OF S. T. COLERIDGE. 71 

Craniology is worth some consideration, although it 
is merely in its rudiments and guesses yet. But all 
the coincidences which have been observed could 
scarcely be by accident. The confusion and absurdity, 
however, will be endless, until some names or proper 
terms are discovered for the organs, which are not 
taken from their mental application or significancy. 
The forepart of the head is generally given up to the 
higher intellectual powers ; the hinder part to the sen- 
sual emotions. 



Silence does not always mark wisdom. I was at 
dinner, some time ago, in company with a man, who 
listened to me and said nothing for a long time ; but 
he nodded his head, and I thought him intelligent. At 
length, towards the end of the dinner, some apple 
dumplings were placed on the table, and my man had 
no sooner seen them than he burst forth with — " Them's 
the jockeys for me !" I wish Spurzheim could have 
examined the fellow's head. 



Some folks apply epithets as boys do in making 
Latin verses. When I first looked upon the Falls of 
the Clyde, I was unable to find a word to express my 
feelings. At last, a man, a stranger to me, who arrived 

matter of general conduct in life, if you furnished the pertinent 
circumstances, I would have sooner adopted than Mr. Coleridge's ; 
but I would not take him as a guide through streets or fields, or 
earthly roads. He had much of the geometrician about him ; but 
he could not find his way. In this, as in many other peculiarities 
of more importance, he inherited strongly from his learned and 
excellent father, who deserves, and will, I trust, obtain, a separate 
notice for himself when his greater son's hfe comes to be written. 
I believe the beginning of Mr. C.'s liking for Dr. Spurzheim was 
the hearty good-humour with which the Doctor bore the laughter 
of a party, in the presence of which he, unknowing of his man, 
denied any Ideality, and awarded an unusual share of Locality, to 
the majestic silver-haired head of my dear uncle and father-in- 
law. But Mr. Coleridge immediately shielded the craniologist 
under the distinction preserved in the text, and perhaps, since 
that time, there may be a couple of organs assigned to the latter 
faculty.— Ed. 



72 TABLE-TALK 

about the same time, said — " How majestic !" — (It 
was the precise term, and I turned round and was say- 
ing — " Thank you, sir ! that is the exact word for it" — 
when he added, eodemflatu) — " Yes, how yery pretty .'" 



July 8, 1827. 

Bull and Waterland — The Trinity. 

Bull and Waterland are the classical writers on the 

Trinity.* In the Trinity there is, 1. Ipseity. 2. Alterity. 

3. Community. You may express the formula thus : — 

God, the absolute Will or Identity, = 

Prothesis. 

The Father=Thesis. The Son= Antithesis. The 

Spirit = Synthe s is . 



The author of the Athanasian Creed is unknown. 
It is, in my judgment, heretical in the omission, or im- 
plicit denial, of the Filial subordination in the God- 
head, which is the doctrine of the Nicene Creed, and 
for which Bull and Waterland have so fervently and 
triumphantly contended ; and by not holding to which, 
Sherlock staggered to and fro between Tritheism and 
Sabellianism. This creed is also tautological, and, if 
not persecuting, which I will not discuss, certainly 
containing harsh and ill-conceived language. 



How much I regret that so many religious persons 

of the present day think it necessary to adopt a certain 

* cant of manner and phraseology as a token to each 

other. They must improve this and that text, and 

* Mr. Coleridge's admiration of Bull and Waterland as high 
theologians was very great. Bull he used to read in the Latin 
Defensio Fidei Nicaenag, using the Jesuit Zola's edition of 1784, 
which, I think, he bought at Rome. He told me once, that when 
he was reading a Protestant English bishop's work on the Trin- 
ity, in a copy edited by an Italian Jesuit in Italy, he felt proud of 
the church of England, and in good-humour with the church of 
Rome.— Ed. 



OF S. T. COLERIDGE. 73 

they must do so and so in a prayerful way ; and so on. 
Why not use common language ? A young lady the 
other day urged upon me that such and such feelings 
were the marrow of all religion ; upon which I recom- 
mended her to try to walk to London upon her marrow- 
bones only. 



July 9, 1827. 
Scale of Animal Being. 

In the very lowest link in the vast and mysterious 
chain of Being, there is an effort, although scarcely 
apparent, at individualization ; but it is almost lost in 
the mere nature. A little higher up, the individual is 
apparent and separate, but subordinate to any thing in 
man. At length, the animal rises to be on a par with the 
lowest power of the human nature. There are some of 
our natural desires which only remain in our most perfect 
state on earth as means of the higher powers' acting.* 

* These remarks seem to call for a citation of that wonderful 
passage, transcendent alike in eloquence and philosophic depth, 
which the readers of the Aids to Reflection have long since laid 
up in cedar : — 

" Every rank of creatures, as it ascends in the scale of creation, 
leaves death behind it or under it. The metal at its height of 
being seems a mute prophecy of the coming vegetation, into a 
mimic semblance of which it crystallizes. The blossom and flower, 
the acme of vegetable life, divides into correspondent organs with 
reciprocal functiohs, and by instinctive motions and approxima- 
tions seems impatient of that fixure, by which it is differenced 
in kind from the flower-shaped Psyche that flutters with free 
wing above it. And wonderfully in the insect realm doth the 
irritability, the proper seat of instinct, while yet the nascent 
sensibility is subordinate thereto, — most wonderfully, I say, doth 
the muscular life in the insect, and the musculo-arterial in the 
bird, imitate and typically rehearse the adaptive understanding, 
yea, and the moral affections and charities of man. Let us carry 
ourselves back, in spirit, to the mysterious week, the teeming 
work-days of the Creator, as they rose in vision before the eye of 
the inspired historian ' of the generations of the heaven and 
earth, in the days that the Lord God made the earth and the 
heavens.' And who that hath watched their ways with an un- 

Vol, L— D 7 



74 TABLE-TALK 

July 12, 1827. 

Popedom — Scanderheg — Thomas a Becket — Pure ages 
of Greeks Italian, and English — Luther — Baxter — 
Algernon Sidney''s Style — Ariosio and Tasso — 
Prose and Poetry — The Fathers — Renfurt — Jacob 
Behmen. 

What a grand subject for a history the Popedom 
is ! The Pope ought never to have affected temporal 
sway, but to have lived retired within St. Angelo, and- 
to have trusted to the superstitious awe inspired by 
his character and office. He spoiled his chance when 
he meddled in the petty Italian politics. 



Scanderheg would be a very fine subject for Walter 
Scott; and so would Thomas a Becket, if it is not 
rather too much for him. It involves in essence the 
conflict between arms, or force, and the men of letters. 

derstanding heart, could, as the vision evolving still advanced 
towards him, contemplate the filial and loyal bee ; the home- 
building, v^redded, and divorceless swallow ; and, above all, the 
manifoldly intelligent ant tribes, with their commonwealth and 
confederacies, their warriors and miners, the husband-folk, that 
fold in their tiny flocks on the honeyed leaf, and the virgin sisters 
with the holy instincts of maternal love, detached and in selfless 
purity, and not say to himself. Behold the shadow of approaching 
Humanity, the sun rising from behind, in the kindling morn of 
creation ! Thus all lower natures find their highest good in sem- 
blances and seekings of that which is higher and better. All 
things strive to ascend, and ascend in their striving. And shall 
man alone stoop 1 Shall his pursuits and desires, the reflection.8 
of his inward life, be like the reflected image of a tree on the 
edge of a pool, that grows downward, and seeks a mock heaven 
in the unstable element beneath it, in neighbourhood with the slim 
water-weeds and oozy bottom-gra.ss that are yet better than itself 
and more noble, in as far as substances that appear as shadows 
are preferable to shadows mistaken for substance ! No ! it must 
be a higher good to make you happy. While you labour for any 
thing below your proper humanity, you seek a happy life in the 
region of death. Well saith the moral poet : — 

" ' Unless above himself he can 
Erect himself, how raean a thing is man !' " 
■«. F. 105, 2d ed.—ED. 



OF S. T. COLERIDGE. 75 

Observe the superior truth of language, in Greek, 
to Theocritus inclusively ; in Latin, to the Augustan 
age exclusively ; in Italian, to Tasso exclusively ; and 
in English, to Taylor and Barrow inclusively. 

Luther is, in parts, the most evangelical writer I 
know, after the apostles and apostolic men. 



Pray read with great attention Baxter's Life of him- 
self. It is an inestimable work.* I may not unfre- 
quently doubt Baxter's memory, or even his compe- 
tence, in consequence of his particular modes of think- 
ing ; but I could almost as soon doubt the Gospel verity 
as his veracity. 



1 am not enough read in Puritan divinity to know 
the particular objections to the surplice, over and above 
the general prejudice against the retenta of Popery. 
Perhaps that was the only ground, — a foolish one 
enough. 



In my judgment Bolingbroke's style is not in any 
respect equal to that of Cowley or Dryden. Read 
Algernon Sidney ; his style reminds you as little of 
books as of blackguards. What a gentleman he was ! 



Burke's Essay on the Sublime and Beautiful seems 
to me a poor thing ; and what he says upon Taste is 
neither profound nor accurate. 

* This, a very thick folio of the old sort, was one of Mr. Cole- 
ridge's text-books for English church history. He used to say 
that there was no substitute for it iu a course of study for a cler- 
gyman or public man, and that the modern political Dissenters, 
who affected to glory in Baxter as a leader, would read a bitter 
lecture on themselves in every page of it. In a marginal note I 
find Mr. C. writing thus : "Alas! in how many respects does my 
lot resemble Baxter's ! But how much less have my bodily evils 
been, and yet how very much greater an impediment have I suf- 
fered them to be ! But verily Baxter's labours seem miracles of 
supporting grace." — Ed. 

D2 



76 '• TABLE-TALK 

Well ! I am for Ariosto against Tasso ; though I 
would rather praise Ariosto's poetry than his poem. 

I wish our clever young poets would remember my 
homely definitions of prose and poetry; that is, prose 
.= words in their best" order ; — poetry == the best words 
in the best order. 



I conceive Origen, Jerome, and Augustine, to be the 
three great fathers in respect of theology, and Basil, 
Gregory Nazianzen, and Chrysostom, in respect of 
rhetoric. 



Renfurt possessed the immense learning and robust 
sense of Selden, with the acuteness and wit of Jortin. 

Jacob Behmen remarked, that it was not wonderful 
that there were separate languages for England, France, 
Germany, &c. ; but rather that tliere was not a differ- 
ent language for every degree of latitude. In confirma- 
tion of which, see the infinite variety of languages 
among the barbarous tribes of South America. 



July 20, 1827. 

Non-Perception of Colours, 

What is said of some persons' not being able to 
distinguish colours, I believe. It may proceed from 
general weakness, which will render the differences 
imperceptible, just as the dusk or twilight makes all 
colours one. This defect is most usual in the blue 
ray, the negative pole. 



I conjecture that when finer experiments have been 
applied, the red, yellow, and orange rays will be found 
as capable of communicating magnetic action as the 
other rays, though, perhaps, under different circum- 
stances. Remember this, if you are alive tM^enty 
years hence, and think of me. 



of s. t. coleridge. 77 

July 21, 1827. 

Restoration — Reformation. 

The elements had been well shaken together during 
the civil wars and interregnum under the Long Parlia- 
ment and Protectorate ; and nothing but the cowardli- 
ness and impolicy of the Nonconformists, at the Res- 
toration, could have prevented a real reformation on a 
wider basis. But the truth is, by going over to Breda 
with their stiff flatteries to the hollow-hearted king, 
they put Sheldon and the bishops on the side of the 
constitution. 



The Reformation in the sixteenth century narrowed 
reform. As soon as men began to call themselves 
names, all hope of further amendment was lost. 



July 23, 1827. 

William III. — Berkeley — Spinosa — Genius — Envy — 
Love. 

William the Third was a greater and much hon- 
ester man than any of his ministers. I believe every 
one of them, except Shrewsbury, has now been de- 
tected in correspondence with James. 



Berkeley can only be confuted, or answered, by one 
sentence. So it is with Spinosa : his premises granted, 
the deduction is a chain of adamant. 



Genius may co-exist with wildness, idleness, folly, 
even with crime ; but not long, believe me, with self- 
ishness, and the indulgence of an envious disposition. 
Envy is KotKirros- y.ct) hxaiorccror -^foV, as I once saw it 
expressed somewhere in a page of Stobseus : it dwarfs 
and withers its worshippers. 
7* 



78 TABLE-TALK 

The man's desire is for the woman, but the woman's 
desire is rarely other than for the desire of the man.* 



August 29, 1827. 
Jeremy Taylor — Hooker — Ideas. 

Jeremy Taylor is an excellent author for a young 
man to study for the purpose of imbibing noble prin- 
ciples, and at the same time of learning to exercise 
caution and thought in detecting his numerous errors. 



I must acknowledge, with some hesitation, that I 
think Hooker has been a little over-credited for his 
judgment. 



Take, as an instance of an idea,! the continuity and 

* "A woman's friendship," I find written by Mr. C. on a page 
died red with an imprisoned rose-lee-f, " a woman's friendship 
borders more closely on love than man's. Men affect each other 
in the reflection of noble or friendly acts ; while women ask fewer 
proofs, and more signs and expressions, of attachment." — Ed. 

t The reader who has never studied Plato, Bacon, Kant, or 
Coleridge, in their philosophic works, will need to be told that the 
word Idea is not used in thits passage in the sense adopted by 
" Dr. Holofernes, who, in a lecture on metaphysics, delivered at 
one of the Mechanics' Institutions, explodes all ideas but those 
of sensation ; while his friend, deputy Costard, has no idea of a 
better-flavoured haunch of venison than he dined oflf at the Lon- 
don Tavern last week. He admits (for the deputy has travelled) 
that the French have an excellent idea of cooking in general ; but 
holds that their most accomplished maitres de cuisine have no 
more idea of dressing a turtle, than the Parisian gourmands them- 
selves have any real idea of the true taste and colour of the fat." — 
Church and State, p. 78. No ! what Mr. Coleridge meant by an 
Idea in this place may be expressed in various ways out of his 
own vvorks. I subjoin a sufficient definition from the Church and 
Stiite, p. 6. " That which, contemplated ohjeclively (that is, as 
existing externally to the mind), we call a law ; the same contem- 
plated subjectively (that is, as existing in a subject or mind), is 
an idea. Hence Plato often names Ideas, Laws ; and Lord Bacon, 
the British Plato, describes the laws of the material universe as 
the ideas in nature. ' Quod in natura naturata Lex, in natura 



OF S. T. COLERIDGE. 79 

coincident distinctness of nature ; or this : vegetable 
life is always striving to be something that it is not ; 
animal life to be itself. Hence, in a plant, the parts, 
as the root, the stem, the branches, leaves, Slc, remain, 
after they have each produced or contributed to produce 
a different status of the whole plant : in an animal 
nothing of the previous states remains distinct, but is 
incorporated into, and constitutes progressively, the 
very self. 



August 30, 1827. 

Painting. 

Painting is the intermediate somewhat between a 
thought and a thing. 



• April 13, 1830. 

Prophecies of the Old Testament — Messiah — Jews — • 
The Trinity. 

If the prophecies of the Old Testament are not 
rightly interpreted of Jesus our Christ, then there is no 
prediction whatever contained in it of that stupendous 
event — the rise and establishment of Christianity— in 
comparison with which, all the preceding Jewish his- 
tory is as nothing. With the exception of the book 
of Daniel, which the Jews themselves never classed 
among the prophecies, and an obscure text of Jeremiah, 
there is not a passage in all the Old Testament which 
favours the notion of a temporal Messiah. What moral 
object was there for which such a Messiah should 
come 1 What could he have been but a sort of virtuous 
Sesostris or Bonaparte ? 

naturantc Idea dicitur.' " A more subtle limitation of the word 
may be found in the last paragraph of Essay (E) in the Appendix 
lo the Statesman's Manual. — Ed. 



80 TABLE-TALK 

I know that some excellent men — Israelites without 
guile — do not, in fact, expect the advent of any Mes- 
siah : but believe or suggest that it may possibly have 
been God's will and meaning, that the Jews should 
remaui a quiet light among the nations for the purpose 
of pointing at the doctrine of the unity of God. To 
which I say, that this truth of the essential unity of 
God has been preserved, and gloriously preached, by 
Christianity alone. The Romans never shut up their 
temples, nor ceased to worship a hundred or a thousand 
gods and goddesses, at the bidding of the Jews ; the 
Persians, the Hindoos, the Chinese, learned nothing of 
this great truth from the Jews. But from Ciiristians 
they did learn it in various degrees, and are still learning 
it. The religion of the Jews is, indeed, a light ; but it 
is as the light of the glow-worm, which gives no heat, 
and illumines nothing but itself. 



It has been objected to me, that the vulgar notions of 
the Trinity are at variance with this doctrine ; and|it 
was added, whether as flattery or sarcasm matters not, 
that few believers in the Trinity thought of it as I did. 
To which again humbly, yet confidently, I reply, that 
my superior light, if superior, consists in nothing more 
than this, — that I more clearly see that the doctrine of 
Trinal Unity is an absolute truth transcending my 
human means of understanding it, or demonstrating it. 
I may or may not be able to utter the formula of my 
faith in this mystery in more logical terms than some 
others ; but this I say ; Go and ask the most ordinary 
man, a professed believer in this doctrine, whether he 
believes in and worships a plurality of Gods, and he 
will start with horror at the bare suggestion. He may 
not be able to explain his creed in exact terms ; but 
he will tell you that he does believe in one God, and 
in one God only, — reason about it as you may. 



What all the churches of the East and West, what 
Romanist and Protestant, believe in common, that I call 
Christianity. In no proper sense of the word can I 



OF S. T. COLERIDGE, 81 

call Unitarians and Socinians believers in Christ ; at 
least, not in the only Christ of whom I have read or 
know any thing. 



April 14, 1830. 

Conversion of the Jews — Jews in Poland. 

There is no hope of converting the Jews in the way 
and with the spirit unhappily adopted by our church ; 
and, indeed, by all other modern churches. In the first 
age, the Jewish Christians undoubtedly considered 
themselves as the seed of Abraham, to whom the prom- 
ise had been made ; and, as such, a superior order. 
Witness the account of St. Peter's conduct in the 
Acts,* and the Epistle to the Galatians.f St. Paul 
protested against this, so far as it went to make Jew- 
ish observances compulsory on Christians who were 
not of Jewish blood ; and so far as it in any way led 
to bottom the religion on the Mosaic covenant of works ; 
but he never denied the birthright of tiie chosen seed : 
on the contrary, he himself evidently believed that the 
Jews would ultimately be restored ; and he says, — If the 
Gentiles have been so blest by the rejection of the 
Jews, how much rather shall they be blest by the con- 
version and restoration of Israel ! Why do we expect 
the Jews to abandon their national customs and dis- 
tinctions ? The Abyssinian church said that they 
claimed a descent from Abraham ; and that, in virtue 
of such ancestry, they observed circumcision : but de- 
claring withal, that they rejected the covenant of works, 
and rested on the promise fulfilled in Jesus Christ. 
In consequence of this appeal, the Abyssinians were 
permitted to retain their customs. 



If Rhenferd's Essays were translated — if the Jews 
were made acquainted with the real argument — if they 
were addressed kindly, and were not required to aban-* 

* Chap. XV. t Chap. ii. 

D 3 



82 TABLE-TALK 

don their distinctive customs and national type, but 
were invited to become Christians as of the seed of 
Abraham — I believe there would be a Christian syna- 
gogue in a year's time. As it is, the Jews of the lower 
orders are the very lowest of mankind ; they have not 
a principle cf honesty in them ; to grasp and be gelling 
money for ever is the.r single and exclusive occupation. 
A learned Jew once siiid to me, upon this subject : — " 
sir ! make the inhabitants of Holly well- street and 
Duke's Place Israelites first, and then M'e may debate 
about making them Christians."* 

In Poland, the Jews are great landholders, and are 
the worst of tyrants. They have no kind of sympathy 
with their labourers and dependants. They never meet 
them in common worship. Land, in the hand of a 
large number of Jews, instead of being what it ought 
to be, the organ of permanence, would become the or- 
gan of rigidity in a nation ; by their intermarriages 
within their own pale, it would be in fact perpetually 
entailed. Then, again, if a popular tumult were to 
take place in Poland, who can doubt that the Jews 
would be the first objects of murder and spoliation ? 

* Mr. Coleridge had a very friendly acquaintance with several 
learned Jews in this country, and he told me that, whenever he 
had fallen in with a Jew of thorough education and literary habits, 
he had always found him possessed of a strong natural capacity 
for metaphysical disquisitions. I may mention here the best known 
of his Jewish friends, one whom he deeply respected, Hymen 
Hurwitz. 

Mr. C. once told me that he had for a long time been amusing 
himself with a clandestine attempt upon the faith of three or four 
persons whom he was in the habit of seeing occasionally. I think 
he was undermining, at the time he mentioned this to me, a Jew, 
a Swedenborgian, a Roman Catholic, and a New Jerusalemite, or 
by whatsoever other name the members of that somewhat small, 
but very respectable church, planted in the neiglibourhood of Lin- 
coin's Inn Fields, delight to be known. He said he had made 
most way with the disciple of Swedenborg, who might be con- 
sidered as a convert; that he had perplexed the Jew, and had put 
the Roman Catholic into a bad humour ; but that upon the New 
Jerusalemite he had made no more impression than if he had been 
arguing with the man in the moon. — Ed. 



OF S. T. COLERIDGE 83 

A.PRIL 17, 1830. 

Mosaic Miracles — Pantheism. 

In the miracles of Moses there is a remarkable 
intermingling of acts which we should now-a-days 
call simply providential, with such as we should still 
call miraculous. The passing of the Jordan, in the 
3d chapter of the book of Joshua, is perhaps the purest 
and sheerest miracle recorded in the Bible ; it seems 
to have been wrought for the miracle's sake, and so 
thereby to show to the Jews — the descendants of those 
who had come -out of Egypt — that the same God who 
had appeared to their fathers, and who had by miracles, 
in many respects providential only, preserved them in 
the wilderness, was their God also. The manna and 
quails were ordinary provisions of Providence, ren- 
dered miraculous by certain laws and qualities an- 
nexed to them in the particular instance. The pas- 
sage of the Red Sea was effected by a strong wind, 
which, we are told, drove back the waters ; and so on. 
But then, again, the death of the first-born was purely 
miraculous. Hence, then, both Jews and Egyptians 
might take occasion to learn, that it was one and the 
same God who interfered specially, and who governed 
all generally. 

Take away the first verse of the book of Genesis, 
and then what immediately follows is an exact history 
or sketch of Pantheism. Pantheism was taught in the 
mysteries of Greece ; of which the Cabeiric were the 
purest and the most ancient. 



April 18, 1830. 

Poetic Promise. 

In the present age, it is next to impossible to pre- 
dict from specimens, however favourable, that a young 
man will turn out a great poet, or rather a poet at all. 



84 TABLE-TALK 

Poetic taste, dexterity in composition, and ingenious 
imitation, often produce poems tlat are very promising 
in appearance. But genius, or the power of doing 
something new, is anottier thing. Tennyson's son- 
nets, such as I have seen, have many of the character- 
istic excellences of those of Wordsworth and Southey- 



April 19, 1830. 

It is a small thing that the patient knows of his own 
state; yet some things he does know better than his 
physician. 

I never had, and never could feel, any horror at death, 
simply as death. 

Good and bad men are each less so than they seem. 



April 30, 1830. 

Nominalists and Realists — British Schoolmen — 
Spinosa. 

The result of my system will be to show, that, so 
far from tlie world being a goddess in petticoats, it is 
rather the devil in a strait waistcoat. 



The controversy of the Nominalists and Realists 
was one of the greatest and most important that ever 
occupied the human mind. They were both right, and 
both wrong. They each maintained opposite poles of 
the same truth ; which truth neither of them saw, for 
want of a higher premiss. Duns Scotus was the head 
of the Realists ; Ockham,* his own disciple, of the 

* John Duns Scotus was born in 1274, at Dunstone, in the 
parish of Eniildune, near Alnwick. He was a fellow of Merton 
College, and Professor of Divinity at Oxford. After acquiring an 
uncommon reputation at his own university, he went to Paris, and 



OF S. T. COLERIDGE. 85 

Nominalists. Ockham, though certainly very prolix, 
is a most extraordinary writer. 



It is remarkable, that two thirds of the eminent 
schoolmen were of British birth. It was the school- 
men who made the languages of Europe what they 

thence to Cologne, and there died in 1308, at the early age of 
thirty-four years. He was called the Subtle Doctor, and found 
time to compose works which now fill twelve volumes in folio. — 
See the Lyons edition, by Luke Wadding, in 1639. 

William Ockham was an Englishman, and died about 1347; 
but the place and year of his birth are not clearly ascertained. 
He was styled the Invincible Doctor, and wrote bitterly against 
Pope John XXII. We all remember Butler's account of these 
worthies : — 

" He knew what's what, and that's as high 

As metaphysic wit can fly ; 

In school divinity as able 

As he that bight Irrefragable, 

A second Thomas, or at once 

To name them all, another Dunse; 

Profound in all the Nominal 

And Real ways beyond them all ; 

For he a rope of sand could twist 

As tough as learned Sorbonist." 

HuDiBRAs, part i., canto i., v. 149. 
The Irrefragable Doctor was Alexander Hales, a native of Glou- 
cestershire, who died in 1245. Among his pupils at Paris was 
Fidanza, better known by the name of Bonaventura, the Seraphic 
Doctor. The controversy of the Realists and the Nominalists 
cannot be explained in a note ; but in substance, the original point 
of dispute may be thus stated : The Realists held generally with 
Aristotle, that there were universal ideas or essences impressed 
upon matter, and coeval with and inherent in their objects. Plato 
held that these universal forms existed as exemplars in the Divine 
Mind previously to and independently of matter ; but both main- 
tained, under one shape or other, the real existence of universal 
forms. On the other hand, Zeno and the old Stoics denied the 
existence of these universals, and contended that they were no 
more than mere terms and nominal representatives of their par- 
ticular objects. The Nominalists were the followers of Zeno, 
and held that universal forms are merely modes of conception, 
and exist solely in and for the mind. It does not require much 
reflection to see how great an influence these different systems 
might have upon the enunciation of the higher doctrines of Chris- 
tianity. — Fd. 

8 



86 TABLE-TALK 

now are. We laugh at the quiddities of those writers 
now, but, in truth, these quiddities are just the parts 
of their language which we have rejected ; while we 
never think of the mass which we have adopted, and 
have in daily use. 

Spinosa, at the very end of his life, seems to have 
gained a glimpse of the truth. In the last letter pub- 
lished in his works, it appears that he began to suspect 
his premiss. His unica substantia is, in fact, a mere 
notion — a subject of the mind, and no object at all. 



Plato's works are preparatory exercises for the mind. 
He leads you to see, that propositions involving in 
themselves a contradiction in terms, are nevertheless 
true ; and which, therefore, must belong to a higher 
logic — that of ideas. They are self-contradictory only 
in the Aristotelian logic, which is the instrument of the 
understanding. I have read most of the works of 
Plato several times with profound attention, but not all 
his writings. In fact, I soon found that I had read 
Plato by anticipation. He was a consummate genius.* 



My mind is in a state of philosophical doubt as to 
animal magnetism. Von Spix, the eminent naturalist, 
makes no doubt of the matter, and talks coolly of giv- 

* " This is the test and character of a truth so affirmed (a 
truth of the reason, an Idea) — that in its own proper form it is in- 
conceivable. For to conceive., is a function of the understanding, 
which can be exercised only on subjects subordinate thereto. And 
yet to the forms of the understanding all truth must be reduced 
that is to be fixed as an object of reflection, and to be rendered 
expressible. And here we have a second test and sign of a truth 
so affirmed, that it can come forth out of the moulds of the under- 
standing only in the disguise of two contradictory conceptions, 
each of which is partially true, and the conjunction of both con- 
ceptions becomes the representative or expression (the exponent) 
of a truth beyond conception and inexpressible. Examples : before 
Abraham was, I am. God is a circle, the centre of which is 
everywhere, and the circumference nowhere. The soul is all in 
every part." — Aids to Reflection, p. 224, n. See also Church and 
State, p. 12.— Ed. 



OF S. T. COLERIDGE. 87 

ing doses of it. The torpedo affects a third or exter- 
nal object, by an exertion of its own will ; such a 
power is not properly electrical ; for electricity acts 
invariably under the same circumstances. A steady 
gaze will make many persons of fair complexions blush 
deeply. Account for that.* 

* I find the following remarkable passage in p. 301, vol. i., of 
the richly annotated copy of Mr. Southey's Life of Wesley, which 
Mr. C. bequeathed as his " darhng book, and the favourite of his 
library" to its great and honoured author and donor : — 

"The coincidence throughout of ali these Methodist cases with 
those of the Magnetists makes me wish for a solution that would 
apply to all. Now this sense or appearance of a sense of the dis- 
tant, both in time and space, is common to almost all the mag- 
netic patients in Denmark, Germany, France, and North Italy, to 
many of whom the same or a similar solution could not apply. 
Likewise, many cases have been recorded at the same time, in 
different countries, by men who had never heard of each other's 
names, and where the simultaneity of publication proves the inde- 
pendence of the testimony. And among the Magnetizers and At- 
testers are to be found names of men, whose competence in re- 
spect of integrity and incapabihty of intentional falsehood is fully 
equal to that of Wesley, and their competence in respect of phy- 
sio- and psychological insight and attainments, incomparably 
greater. Who would dream, indeed, of comparing Wesley with 
a Cuvior, Hufeland, Blumenbach, Eschenmeyer, Reil, &c. ? Were 
I asked what I think, my answer would be, — that the evidence 
enforces skepticism and a non liquet ; — too strong and consenta- 
neous for a candid mind to be satisfied of its falsehood, or its sol- 
vibility on the supposition of imposture or casual coincidence ; — 
too fugacious and unfixable to support any theory that supposes 
the always potential, and, under certain conditions and circum- 
stances, occasionally active, existence of a correspondent faculty 
in the human soul. And nothing less than such an hypothesis 
would be adequate to the satisfactory explanation of the facts ; — 
though that of a metastasis of specific functions of the nervous 
energy, taken in conjunction with extreme nervous excitement, 
plus some delusion, p/ws some illusion, flas some imposition, p/us 
some chance and accidental coincidence, might determine the di- 
rection in which the skepticism should vibrate. Nine years has 
the subject of Zoo-magnetism been before me. I have traced it 
historically, collected a mass of documents in French, German, 
Italian, and the Latinists of the sixteenth century, have never neg- 
lected an opportunity of questioning eye-witnesses, ex. gr. Tieck, 
Treviranus, De Prati, Meyer, and others of literary or medical 
celebrity, and I remain where I was, and where the first perusal 
of Klug's work had left me, without having moved an inch back~ 



88 TABLE-TALK 

May 1, 1830. 

Fall of Man — Madness — Broum and Darwin — 
Nitrous Oxydc. 

A FALL of some sort or other — the creation, as it 
were, of the non-absolute — is the fundamental postu- 
late of the moral history of man. Without this hypoth- 
esis, man is unintelligible ; with it, every phenome- 
non is explicable. The mystery itself is too profound 
for human insight. 



Madness is not simply a bodily disease. It is the 
sleep of the spirit with certain conditions of wakeful- 
ness : that is to say, lucid intervals. During this 
sleep, or recession of the spirit, the lower or bestial 
states of life rise up into action and prominence. It is 
an awful thing to be eternally tempted by the perverted 
senses. The reason may resist — it does resist — for 
a long time ; but too often, at length, it yields for a 
moment, and the man is mad for ever. An act of the 
will is, in many instances, precedent to complete in- 
sanity. I think it was Bishop Butler, who said, that 
he was all his life struggling against the devilish sug- 
gestions of his senses, which would have maddened 
him, if he had relaxed the stern wakefulness of hi» 
reason for a single moment. 



Brow^n's and Darwin's theories are both ingenious ; 
but the first will not account for sleep, and the last 
will not account for death : considerable defects, you 
must allow. 



It is said that every excitation is followed by a cotn- 

ward or forward. The reply of Treviranus, the famous botanist, 
to me, when he was in London, is worth recording : — ' Ich habe 
gesehen was (ich weiss das) ich nicht wiirde geglaubt haben auf 
ihren erzahlung,' &,c. ' I have seen what I am certain I would 
not have beUeved on your telling ; and in all reason, therefore, I 
can neither expect nor wish that you should believe on mine.^ '* 
—Editor. 



OF S. T. COLERIDGE. 89 

mensurate exhaustion. That is not so. The excita- 
tion caused by inhaling nitrous oxyde is an exception 
at least ; it leaves no exhaustion on the bursting of the 
bubble. The operation of this gas is to prevent the 
decarbonating of the blood ; and, consequently, if 
taken excessively, it would produce apoplexy. The 
blood becomes black as ink. The voluptuous sensa- 
tion attending the inhalation is produced by the com- 
pression and resistance. 



May 2, 1830. 

Plants — Insects — Men — Dog — Ant and Bee. 

Plants exist in themselves. Insects hy, or by 
means of, themselves. Men,y6»r themselves. There 
is grow^th only in plants ; but there is irritability, or, 
a better word, instinctivity, in insects. 



You may understand by insect, life in sections — dif- 
fused generally over all the parts. 

The dog alone, of all brute animals, has a cro^y*?, 
or aflection upwards to man. 



The ant and the bee are, I think, much nearer man 
in the understanding or faculty of adapting means to 
proximate ends, than the elephant.* 



May 3, 1830. 
Black Colonel. 
What an excellent character is the black Colonel 
in Mrs. Bennett's " Beggar Girl !"t 

* I remember Mr. C. was accustomed to consider the ant as 
the most intellectual, and the dog as the most affectionate, of the 
irrational creatures, so far as our present acquaintance with the 
facts of natural history enables us to judge. — Ed. 

t This character was frequently a subject of pleasant descrip- 



90 TABLE-TALK 

If an inscription be put upon my tomb, it may be 
that I was an enthusiastic lover of the church ; and as 
enthusiastic a hater of those who have betrayed it, be 
they who they may.* 



May 4, 1830. 

Holland and the Dutch. 

Holland and the Netherlands ought to be seen 
once, because no other country is like them. Every 
thing is artificial. You will be struck with the com- 
binations of vivid greenery, and water, and building ; 
but every thing is so distinct and rememberable, that 
you would not improve your conception by visiting 
the country a hundred times over. It is interesting to 
see a country and a nature made, as it were, by man, 
and to compare it with God's naiure.f 

tion and enlargement with Mr. Coleridge ; and he generally passed 
from it to a high commendation of Miss Austen's novels, as being 
in their way perfectly genuine and individual productions. — Ed. 
* This was a strong way of expressing a deep-rooted feeling. 
A better and a truer character would be, that Coleridge was a 
lover of the church, and a defender of the faith. This last ex- 
pression is the utterance of a conviction so profound, that it can 
patiently wait for time to prove its truth. — Ed. 

t In the summer of 1828, Mr. Coleridge made an excursion 
with Mr. Wordsworth in Holland, Flanders, and up the Rhine, as 
far as Bergen. He came back, delighted, especially with his stay 
near Bonn, but with an abiding disgiist at the filthy habits of the 
people. Upon Cologne, in particular, he avenged himself in the 
two foUowi.ig pieces : — 

r 
In Kohln, a town of monks and bones, 
And pavements fang'd with murderous stones, 
And rags, and hags, and hideous wenches, 
I counted two-and-seventy stenches, 
All well-defined and genuine stinks I — 
Ye Nymphs that reign o'er sewers and sinks, 
The river Rhine, it is well known. 
Doth wash your city of Cologne ; — 
But tell me. Nymphs ! what power divine 
Shall henceforth wash the river Rhine 1 



OF S. T. COLERIDGE. 91 

If you go, remark (indeed, you viH be forced to do 
so, in spite of yourself), remark, I say, the identity 
(for it is more than proximity) of a disgusting dirtiness 
in all that concerns the dignity of, and reverence for, 
the human person ; and a persecuting painted cleanli- 
ness in every thing connected with property. You 
must not walk in their gardens ; nay, you must hardly 
look into them. 

The Dutch seem very happy and comfortable, cer- 
tainly ; but it is the happiness of animals. In vain 
do you look for the sweet breath of hope and advance- 
ment amonff them.* 



In fact, as to their villas and gardens, they are not 
to be compared to an ordinary London merchant's box. 



May 5, 1830. 

Religion gentilizes — Women and Men — Biblical Com- 
mentators — Walkerite Creed. 

You may depend upon it, religion is, in its essence, 
the most gentlemanly thing in the world. It will alone 
gentilize, if unmixed with cant ; and I know nothing 
else that will, alone. Certainly not the army, which 
is thought to be the grand embellisher of manners. 



A woman's head is usually over ears in her heart. 
Man seems to have been designed for the superior be- 

II. 
As I am a rhymer, 
And now at least a merry one, 
Mr. Mum's Rudesheimer 
A.nd the church of St. Geryoa, 
Are the two things alone 
That deserve to be known 
In the body-and-soul-stinking town of Cologne. — Ed. 

* *' For every gift of noble origin 

Is breathed upon by Hope's perpetual breath." 

Wordsworth. 



92 TABLE-TALK 

ing of the two ; but as things are, I think women are 
generally better creatures than men. They have, 
taken universally, weaker appetites and weaker intel- 
lects, but they have much stronger affections. A man 
with a bad heart has been sometimes saved by a strong 
head ; but a corrupt woman is lost for ever. 

I never could get much information out of the bibli- 
cal commentators. Cocceius has told me the most ; 
but he, and all of them, have a notable trick of pas- 
sing siccissimis pedibus over the parts which puzzle a 
man of reflection. 



This AValkerite creed* is a miscellany of Calvinism 
and Quakerism ; but it is hard to understand it. 



May 7, 1830. 

Home Tooke — Diversions of Purley — Gender of the 
Sun in German, 

HoRNE Tooke was pre-eminently a ready-witted 
man. He had that clearness which is founded on 
shallowness. He doubted nothing ; and, therefore, 
gave you all that he himself knew, or meant, with 
great completeness. His \^oice was very fine, and his 
tones exquisitely discriminating. His mind had no 
progression or development. AH that is worth any 
thing (and that is but little) in the Diversions of Purley, 
is contained in a short pamphlet-letter which he ad- 
dressed to Mr. Dunning ; then it was enlarged to an 
octavo, but there was not a foot of progression beyond 
the pamphlet ; at last a quarto volume, I believe, came 
out ; and yet, verily, excepting Morning Chronicle 
lampoons and political insinuations, there was no ad- 
dition to the argument of the pamphlet. It shows a 
base and unpoetical mind to convert so beautiful, so 
divine a subject as language, into the vehicle or make- 

* Meanincr, I believe, that of the New Jerusalemites, or people 
of the New Church, hereinbefore mentioned. — Ed. 



OP S. T. COLERIDGE. 93 

weight of political squibs. All that is true in Home 
Tooke's book is taken from Lennep, who gave it for 
so much as it was worth, and never pretended to make 
a system of it. Tooke affects to explain the origin 
and whole philosophy of language by what is, in fact, 
only a mere accident of its history. His abuse of 
Harris is most shallow and unfair. Harris, in the 
Hermes, was dealing — not very profoundly, it is true, 
■ — with the philosophy of language, the moral and 
metaphysical causes and conditions of it, &;c. Home 
Tooke, in writing about the formation of words only, 
thought he was explaining the philosophy of language, 
which is a very different thing. In point of fact, he 
was very shallow in the Gothic dialects. I must say, 
all that decantata fabula about the genders of the sun 
and moon in German seems to me great stuff. Origi- 
nally, I apprehend, in the Platt-Deutsch of the north 
of Germany there were only two definite articles — die 
for masculine and feminine, and das for neuter. Then 
it was die sonne^ in a masculine sense, as we say with 
the same word as article, the sun. Luther, in con- 
structing the Hoch-Deutsch (for really his miraculous 
and providential translation of the Bible was the fun- 
damental act of construction of the literary German), 
took for his distinct masculine article the der of the 
Ober-Deutsch, and thus constituted the three articles 
of the present High German, der, die^ das. Naturally, 
therefore, it would then have been, der sonne ; but 
here the analogy of the Greek grammar prevailed ; and 
as sonne had the arbitrary^ feminine termination of the 
Greek, it was left with its old article die, which, origi- 
nally including masculine and feminine both, had 
grown to designate the feminine only. To the best 
of my recollection, the Minnesingers and all the old 
poets always use the sun as masculine ; and, since 
Luther's time, the poets feel the awkwardness of the 
classical gender affixed to the sun so much, that they 
more commonly introduce Phoebus or some other 
synonyme instead. I must acknowledge my doubts, 
whether, upon more accurate investigation, it can be 



94 TABLE-TALK 

shown that there ever was a nation that considered the 
sun in itself, and apart from language, as the feminine 
power. The moon does not so clearly demand a 
feminine as the sun does a masculine sex ; it might 
be considered negatively or neuter ; — yet, if the recep- 
tion of its light from the sun were known, that would 
have been a good reason for making her feminine, as 
being the recipient body. 



As our the was the German die, so I believe our 
that stood for das, and was used as a neuter definite 
article. 

The Platt-Deutsch was a compact language like the 
English, not admitting much agglutination. The Ober- 
Deutsch was fuller and fonder of agglutinating words 
together, although it was not so soft in its sounds. 



May 8, 1830. 

Home Tooke — Jacobins, 
HoRNE TooKE said that his friends might, if they 
pleased, go as far as Slough — he should go no farther 
than Hounslow ; but that was no reason why he should 
not keep them company so far as their roads were the 
same, The answer is easy. Suppose you know, or 
suspect, that a man is about to commit a robbery at 
Slough, though you do not mean to be his accomplice, 
have you a moral right to walk arm in arm with him 
to Hounslow, and, by thus giving him your coun- 
tenance, prevent his being taken up ? The history of 
all the world tells us, that immoral means will ever 
intercept good ends. 



Enlist the interests of stern morality and religious 
enthusiasm in the cause of political liberty, as in the 
time of the old Puritans, and it will be irresistible ; 
but the Jacobins played the whole game of religion, 
and morals, and domestic happiness, into the hands of 
the aristocrats. Thank God ! that they did so. Eng* 



OF S. T. COLERIDGE. 95 

land was saved from civil war by their enormous, their 
providential, blundering. 

Can a politician, a statesman, slight the feelings and 
the convictions of the whole matronage of his country ? 
The women are as influential upon such national in- 
terests as the men. 



Home Tooke was always making a butt of Godwin ; 
who, nevertheless, had that in him which Tooke could 
never have understood. 1 saw a good deal of Tooke 
at one time : he left upon me the impression of his be- 
ing a keen, iron man. 



May 9, 1830. 

Persian and Arabic Poetry — Milesian Tales. 
I MUST acknowledge I never could see much merit 
in the Persian poetry, which I have read in translation. 
There is not a ray of Imagination in it, and but a glim- 
mering of Fancy. It is, in fact, so far as I know, de- 
ficient in truth. Poetry is certainly something more 
than good sense, but it must be good sense, at all 
events, just as a palace is more than a house, but it 
must be a house, at least. 



Arabian poetry is a different thing. I cannot help 
surmising that there is a good deal of Greek fancy in 
the Arabian Nights' Tales. No doubt we have had 
a great loss in the Milesian Tales.* The Book of 

* The Milesiacs were so called, because written or composed 
by Aristides of Miletus, and also because the scene of all or most 
of them was placed in that rich and luxurious city. Harpocra- 
tion cites the sixth book of this collection. Nothing, I believe, 
is now known of the age or history of this Aristides, except what 
may be inferred from the fact that Lucius Cornelius Sisenna 
translated the tales into Latin, as we learn from Ovid : — 

Junxit Aristides Milesia crimina secum — 
and afterward, 

Vertit Aristidem Sisenna, nee obfuit illi 
Historiae turpes inseruisse jocos : — 

Fasti, il, 412--443 



96 TABLE-TALK 

Job is pure Arab poetry of the highest and most 
antique cast. 

Think of the sublimity, I should rather say the pro- 
fundity, of that passage in Ezekiel,* " Son of man, can 
these bones live ? And I answered, O Lord God, thou 
knowest." I know nothing like it. 



May 11, 1830. 

Sir T. Monro — Sir S. Raffles — Canning. 
Sir Thomas Monro and Sir Stamford Raffles were 
both great men ; but I recognise more genius in the 
latter, though, I believe, the world says otherwise. 



I never found what I call an idea in any speech or 
writing of 's. Those enormously prolix ha- 
rangues are a proof of weakness in the higher intel- 
lectual grasp. Canning had a sense of the beautiful 
and the good ; rarely speaks but to abuse, de- 
tract, and degrade. I confine myself to institutions of 
course, and do rot mean personal detraction. In my 
judgment, no man can rightly apprehend an abuse till 
he has first mastered the idea of the use of an institu- 
tion. How fine, for example, is the idea of the unhired 
magistracy of England, taking in and linking together 
the duke to the country gentleman in the primary dis- 
tribution of justice, or in the preservation of order and 

and also from the incident mentioned in the Plutarchian life of 
Crassus, that after the defeat at Carrhae, a copy of the Milesiacs 
of Aristides was found in the baggage of a Roman officer, and 
that Surena (who, by-the-by, if history has not done him injustice, 
was not a man to be over scrupulous in such a case) caused the 
book to be brought into the senate-house of Seleucia, and a por- 
tion of it read aloud, for the purpose of insulting the Romans, 
who, even during war, he said, could not abstain from the peru- 
sal of such infamous compositions, c. 32. The immoral charac- 
ter of these tales, therefore, may be considered pretty clearly 
established ; they were the Decameron and Heptameron of anti- 
quity : but I regret their loss for all that. — Ed. 
* Chap, xxxvii., v. 3. 



OF S. T. COLERIDGE. 97 

execution of law at least throughout the country ! Yet 
never seems to have thought of it for one mo- 
ment, but as connected with brewers, and barristers, 
and tyrannical Squire Westerns ! From what I saw 
of Horner, I thought him a superior man in real in- 
tellectual greatness. 



Canning flashed such a light around the constitution, 
that it was difficult to see the ruins of the fabric 
through it. 



May 12, 1830. 

Shakspeare — Milton — Homer. 

Shaksfeare is the Spinozistic deity — an omnipres- 
ent creativeness. Milton is the deity of prescience ; 
he stands ab extra, and drives a fiery chariot and four, 
making the horses feel the iron curb which holds them 
in. Shakspeare's poetry is characterless ; that is, it does 
not reflect the individual Shakspeare ; but John Milton 
himself is in every line of the Paradise Lost. Shak- 
speare's rhymed verses are excessively condensed, — 
epigrams with the point everywhere ; but in his blank 
dramatic verse he is diffused, Avith a linked sweetness 
long drawn out. No one can understand Shakspeare's 
superiority fully until he has ascertained, by compari- 
son, all that which he possessed in common with sev- 
eral other great dramatists of his age, and has then 
calculated the surplus which is entirely Shakspeare's 
own. His rhythm is so perfect, that you may be al- 
most sure that you do not understand the real force of 
a line, if it does not run well as you read it. The ne- 
cessary mental pause after every hemistich or imper- 
fect line is always equal to the time that would have 
been taken in reading the complete verse. 



I have no doubt that instead of 



the twinn'd stones 



T^Doa the number'd beach- 



98 TABLE-TALK 

in Cymbeline,* it ought to be read thus : — 

the grimed stones 



Upon the umber'' d beach. 

So, in Henry V.,t instead of 

His mountain (or mounting) sire on mountains standing — 

it ought to be read — " his monarch sire," — that is, Ed- 
ward the Third. 



I have no doubt whatever that Homer is a mere con- 
crete name for the rhapsodies of the Iliad.j; Of course 
there was a Homer, and twenty besides. I will en- 
gage to compile twelve books with characters just as 
distinct and consistent as those in the Iliad, from the 
metrical ballads, and other chronicles of England, about 
Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. I say 
nothing about moral dignity, but the mere consistency 
of character. The different qualities were traditional. 
Tristram is always courteous, Lancelot invincible, 
and so on. The same might be done with the Span- 
ish romances of the Cid. There is no subjectivity 
whatever in the Homeric poetry. There is a subjec- 
tivity of the poet, as of Milton, who is himself before 
himself in every thing he writes ; and there is a" sub- 
jectivity of the persona, or dramatic character, as in all 
Shakspeare's great creations, Hamlet, Lear, Sic. 

* Act i., sc. 7. . t Act ii., sc. 4. 

X Mr. Coleridge was a decided "VVolfian in the Homeric ques- 
tion, but he had never read a word of the famous Prolegomena, 
and knew nothing of Wolf's reasoning, but what I told him of it 
in conversation. Mr. C. informed me, that he adopted the con- 
clusion contained in the text upon the first perusal of Vico's 
Scienza Nuova ; " not," he said, " that Vico has reasoned it out 
with such learning and accuracy as you report of Wolf, but Vico 
struck out all the leading hints, and I soon filled up the rest out 
of my own head." — Ed. 



J 



OF S. T. COLERIDGE. 99 

May 14, 1830. 

Reason and Understanding — Words and Names of 
Things. 

Until you have mastered the fundamental differ- 
ence, in kind, between the reason and the understand- 
ing as faculties of the human miml, you cannot escape 
a thousand difficulties in philosophy. It is pre-emi- 
nently the Gradus ad Pkilosophiam. 



The general harmony between the operations of the 
mind and heart, and the words which express them in 
almost all languages, is wonderful ; while the endless 
discrepances between the names of things is very well 
deserving notice. There are nearly a hundred names 
in the different German dialects for the alder-tree. I 
believe many more remarkable instances are to be 
found in Arabic. Indeed, you may take a very preg- 
nant and useful distinction between words and mere ar- 
bitrary names of things. 



May 15, 1830. 

The Trinity — Irving. 

The Trinity is, 1. The Will ; 2. The Reason, or 
Word ; 3. The Love, or Life. As we distinguish these 
three, so we must unite them in one God. The union 
must be as transcendent as the distinction. 

Mr. Irving's notion is tritheism, — nay, rather, in 
terms, tri-deraonism. His opinion about the sinful- 
ness of the humanity of our Lord is absurd, if consid- 
ered in one point of view ; for body is not carcass. 
How can there be a sinful carcass ? But what he says 
is capable of a sounder interpretation. Irving caught 
many things from me ; but he would never attend to 
any thing which he thought he could not use in the 
pulpit. I told him the certain consequences would be, 
that he would fall into grievous errors. Sometimessho 
^E2 



100 TABLE-TALK 

has five or six pages together of the purest eloquence, 
and then an outbreak of almost madman's babble.* 



May 16, 1830. 

Abraham — Isaac — Jacob. 

How wonderfully beautiful is the delineation of the 
characters of the three patriarchs in Genesis ! To be 
sure, if ever man could, without impropriety, be called, 
or supposed to be, " the friend of God," Abraham was 
that man. We are not surprised that Abimelech and 
Ephron seem to reverence him so profoundly. He 
was peaceful, because of his conscious relation to God ; 
in other respects he takes fire, like an Arab sheik, 
at the injuries suffered by Lot, and goes to war with 
the combined kinglings immediately. 



Isaac is, as it were, a faint shadow of his father 
Abraham. Born in possession of the power and wealth 
which his father had acquired, he is always peaceful 
and meditative ; and it is curious to observe his timid 
and almost childish imitation of Abraham's stratagem 
about his wife.f Isaac does it beforehand, and with- 
out any apparent necessity. 



Jacob is a regular Jew, and practises all sorts of 
tricks and wiles, which, according to our modern no- 
tions of honour, we cannot approve. But you will ob- 
serve that all these tricks are confined to matters of 
prudential arrangement, to worldly success and pros- 
perity (for such, in fact, was the essence of the birth- 

* The admiration and sympathy which Mr. Coleridge felt and 
expressed towards the late Mr. Irving, at his first appearance in 
London, were great and sincere ; and his grief at the deplorable 
change which followed was in proportion. But, long after the 
tongues shall have failed and been forgotten, Irving's name will 
live in the splendid eulogies of his friend. — See Church and State^ 
p. 180, n.— El). 

t Gen. xxvi., 6. 



OF S. T. COLERIDGE. 101 

right) ; and I think we must not exact from men of an 
imperfectly civilized age the same conduct as to mere 
temporal and bodily abstinence which we have a right 
to demand from Christians. Jacob is always careful 
not to commit any violence ; he shudders at bloodshed. 
See his demeanour after the vengeance taken on the 
Shechemites.* He is the exact compound of the 
timidity and gentleness of Isaac, and of the underhand 
craftiness of his mother Rebecca. No man could be a 
bad man who loved as he loved Rachel. I dare say 
Laban thought none the worse of Jacob for his plan 
of making the ewes bring forth ring-streaked lambs. 



May 17, 1830. 

Origin of Acts — Love. 

If a man's conduct cannot be ascribed to the angelic, 
nor to the bestial within him, what is there left for us 
to refer to but the fiendish ? Passion without any ap- 
petite is fiendish. 



The best way to bring a clever young man, who has 
become skeptical and unsettled, to reason, is to make 
him feel something in any way. Love, if sincere and 
unworldly, will, in nine instances out of ten, bring him 
to a sense and assurance of something real and actual ; 
and that sense alone will make him think to a sound 
purpose, instead of dreaming that he is thinking. 



May 18, 1830. 

Lord EldoTis Doctrine as to Grammar-schools — De- 
mocracy. 

Lord Eldon's doctrine, that grammar-schools, in 
the sense of the reign of Edward VI. and Queen Eliza- 
beth, must necessarily mean schools for teaching Latin 

* Gen. xxxiv. 

9* 



102 TABLE-TALK 

and Greek, is, I think, founded on an insufficient knowl- 
edge of the history and literature of the sixteentli cen- 
tury. Ben Jonson uses the term " grammar" without 
any reference to the learned languages. 



It is intolerable when men who have no other knowl- 
edge, have not even a competent understanding of that 
world in which they are always living, and to which 
they refer every thing. 



Although contemporary events obscure past events 
in a living man's life, yet, as soon as he is dead, and 
his whole life is a matter of history, one action stands 
out as conspicuous as another. 

A democracy, according to the prescript of pure 
reason, would, in fact, be a church. There would be 
focal points in it, but no superior. 



May 20, 1830. 

The Eucharist — St. John, xix., 11 — Genuineness of 
the Books of Moses — Divinity of Christ — Mosaic 
Prophecies. 

No doubt, Chrysostom, and the other rhetorical fathers, 
contributed a good deal, by their rash use of figurative 
language, to advance the superstitious notion of the 
eucharist ;* but the beginning had been much earlier. 
In Clement, indeed, the mystery is treated as it was 
treated by Saint John and Saint Paul ; but in Hermas 
we see the seeds of the error, and more clearly in 
Irenaeus ; and so it went on till the idea was changed 
into an idol. 



The errors of the Sacramentaries on the one hand, 

* Mr. Coleridge made these remarks upon my quoting Sel- 
den's well-known saying (Table-Talk), " that transubstantiation 
was nothing but rhetoric turned into logic." 



OF S. T. COLERIDGE. 103 

and of the Romanists on the other, are equally great. 
The first have volatilized the eucharist into a meta- 
phor ; the last have condensed it into an idol. 

Jeremy Taylor, in his zeal against transubstanliation, 
contends that the latter part of the sixth chapter of St. 
John's Gospel has no reference to the eucharist. If 
so, St. John wholly passes over this sacred mystery, 
for he does not include it in his notice of the last sup- 
per. Would not a total silence of this great apostle 
and evangelist upon this mystery be strange ? A mys- 
tery, I say ; for it is a mystery ; it is the only mystery 
in our religious worship. When many of the disciples 
left our Lord, and apparently on the very ground that 
this saying was hard, he does not attempt to detain 
them by any explanation, but simply adds the com- 
ment, that his words were spirit. If he had really 
meant that the eucharist should be a mere commemo- 
rative celebration of his death, is it conceivable that 
he would let these disciples go away from him upon 
such a gross misunderstanding? Would he not have 
said, " You need not make a difficulty ; I only mean 
so and so." 



Arnauld, and the other learned Romanists, are irre- 
sistible against the low sacramentary doctrine. 



The sacrament of baptism applies itself and has ref- 
erence to the faith or conviction, and is, therefore, only 
to be performed once : it is the light of man. The 
sacrament of the eucharist is the symbol of all our re- 
ligion : it is the life of man. It is commensurate with 
our will, and we must, therefore, want it continually. 



The meaning of the expression, si f^f, jjv c-oi ^t^oy.ivo't 
uvaSa, " except it were given thee from ahove^'' in the 
i9th chapter of St. John, v. 11, seems to me to have 
been generally and grossly mistaken. It is commonly 
understood as importing that Pilate could have no 
power to deliver Jesus to the Jews unless it had been 
given him hy God^ which, no doubt, is true ; but if that 



104 TABLE-TALK 

is the meaning, where is the force or connexion of the 
following clause, ha toZto, " thereforehe that delivered 
me unto thee hath the greater sin." In what respect 
were the Jews more sinful in delivering Jesus up, 
because Pilate could do nothing except by God's leave ? 
The explanation of Erasmus and Clarke, and some 
others, is very dry-footed. I conceive the meaning of our 
Lord to have been simply this, that Pilate would have 
had no power or jurisdiction — e^ovo-lxv — over him, if it 
had not been given by the Sanhedrim, the (ivaj (iovXfi, and 
therefore it was that the Jews had the greater sin. There 
was also this further peculiar baseness and malignity 
in the conduct of the Jews. The mere assumption of 
Messiahship, as such, was no crime in the eyes of the 
Jews ; they hated Jesus, because he would not be 
their sort of Messiah ; on the other hand, the Romans 
cared not for his declaration that he was the Son of 
God ; the crime in their eyes was his assuming to be 
a king. Now, here were the Jews accusing Jesus be- 
fore the Roman governor of that which, in the first place, 
they knew that Jesus denied in the sense in which 
they urged it, and which, in the next place, had the 
charge been true, would have been so far from a crime 
in their eyes, that the very gospel history itself, as 
w^ell as all the history to the destruction of Jerusalem, 
shows it would have been popular with the whole na- 
tion. They wished to destroy him, and for that purpose 
charge him falsely with a crime which yet was no 
crime in their own eyes, if it had been true ; but only 
so as against the Roman domination, which they hated 
with all their souls, and against which they were them- 
selves continually conspiring ! 



Observe, I pray, the manner and sense in which the 
high-priest understands the plain declaration of our 
Lord, that he was the Son of God.* " I adjure thee by 
the living God, that thou tell us whether thou be the 
Christ, the Son of God," or " the Son of the Blessed," 

* Matt., xxvi., V. 63. Mark, xiv., 61. 



OF S. T. COLERIDGE. 105 

as it is in Mark. Jesus said, " I am, — and hereafter 
ye shall see the Son of man (or me) sitting on the 
right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of 
heaven." Does Caiaphas take this explicit answer as 
if Jesus meant that he was fall of God's spirit, or was 
doing his commands, or walking in his ways, in which 
sense Moses, the prophets, nay, all good men, were 
and are the sons of God ? No, no ! He tears his 
robes in sunder, and cries out, " He hath spoken blas- 
phemy. What further need have we of witnesses ? 
Behold, now ye have heard his blasphemy." What 
blasphemy, I should like to know, unless the assuming 
to be the " Son of God" was assuming to be of the 
divine nature ? 



One striking proof of the genuineness of the Mosaic 
books is this, — they contain precise prohibitions, by 
way of predicting the consequences of disobedience, — 
of all those things which David and Solom.on actually 
did, and gloried in doing, — raising cavalry, making a 
treaty with Egypt, laying up treasure, and polygami- 
sing. Now, would such prohibitions have been fabri- 
cated in those kings' reigns, or afterward? Impos- 
sible. 

The manner of the predictions of Moses is very re- 
markable. He is like a man standing on an eminence, 
and addressing people below him, and pointing to 
things which he can, and they cannot, see. He does 
not say, You will act in such and such a way, and 
the consequences will be so and so ; but, So and so 
will take place, because you will act in such a way ! 



May 21, 1830. 

Talent and Gsnius — Motives and Impulses. 

Talent, lying in the understanding, is often in- 
herited ; genius, being the action of reason and ima- 
gination, rarely or never. 

E3 



106 TABLE-TAT. K 

Motives imply weakness, and the existence of evil 
and temptation. The angelic nature would act from 
impulse alone. A due mean of motive and impulse is 
the only practicable object of our moral philosophy. 



May 23, 1830. 

Co7istitutional and Functional Life — Hysteria — Hy- 
dro-carbonic Gas — Bitters and Tonics — Specific 
Medicines. 

It is a great error in physiology not to distinguish 
between what may be called the general or fundamen- 
tal life — the principium vit(B, and the functional life — 
the life in the functions. Organization must presup- 
pose life as anterior to it : without life, there could not 
be or remain any organization ; but then there is also 
a life in the organs, or functions, distinct from the 
other. Thus, a flute presupposes, — demands, the ex- 
istence of a musician as anterior to it, without whom 
no flute could ever have existed ; and yet again, with- 
out the instrument there can be no music ! 



It often happens that, on the one hand, the prin- 
cipium vit(E^ or constitutional life, may be affected with- 
out any, or the least imaginable, affection of the func- 
tions ; as in inoculation, where one pustule only has 
appeared, and no other perceptible symptom, and yet 
this has so entered into the constitution, as to indis- 
pose it to infection under the most accumulated and in- 
tense contagion ; and, on the other hand, hysteria, hy- 
drophobia, and gout, will disorder the functions to the 
most dreadful degree, and yet often leave the life un- 
touched. In hydrophobia, the mind is quite sound ; 
but the patient feels his muscular and cutaneous life 
forcibly removed from under the control of his will. 



Hysteria may ])e lilly called mimosa^ from its coun<p. 
terfeiting so many diseases, — even death itself. 



OF K. T. COLERIDGE. 107 

Hydro-carbonic gas produces llie most dealli-like 
exhaustion, without any previous excitement. 1 think 
this gas should be inhaled by way of experiment m 
cases of hydrophobia. 



There is a great difference between bitters and 
tonics. Where weakness proceeds from excess of 
irritability, there bitters act beneficially ; because all 
bitters are poisons, and operate by stillmg, and depres- 
sing, and lethargizing the irritability. But where 
weakness proceeds from the opposite cause of relaxa- 
tion, there tonics are good ; because they brace up and 
tighten the loosened string. Bracing is a correct met- 
aphor. Bark goes near to be a combination of a bitter 
and a tonic ; but no perfect medical combination of the 
two properties is yet known. 



The study of specific medicines is too much disre- 
garded now. No doubt, the hunting after specifics is 
a mark of ignorance and weakness in medicine, yet 
the neglect of them is proof also of immaturity ; for, 
in fact, all medicines will be found specific in the per- 
fection of the science* 



May 25, 1830. 

Epistles to the Ephesians and Colossians — Oaths. 

The Epistle to the Ephesians is evidently a cath- 
olic epistle, addressed to the whole of what might be 
called St. Paul's diocess. It is the divinest compo- 
sition of man. It embraces every doctrine of Chris- 
tianity ; — first, those doctrines peculiar to Christianity, 
and then those precepts common to it with natural re- 
ligion. The Epistle to the Colossians is the overflow- 
ing, as it were, of St. Paul's mind upon the same 
subject. 



The present system of taking oaths is horrible. It 
is awfully absurd to make a man invoke God's wrath 



108 TABLE-TALK 

upon himself, if he speaks false; it is, in my judg- 
ment, a sin to do so. The Jews' oath is an adjuration 
by the judge to the witness : '' In the name of God, I 
ask you." There is an express instance of it in the 
high-priest's adjuring or exorcising Christ by the living 
God, in the twenty-sixth chapter of Matthew, and you 
will observe that our Lord answered the appeal.* 

You may depend upon it, the more oath-taking, the 
more lying, generally, among the people. 



May 27, 1830. 

Flogging, 

I HAD one just flogging. When I was about thirteen, 
I went to a shoemaker, and begged him to take me as 
his apprentice. He, being an honest man, immediately 
took me to Bowyer, Avho got into a great rage, knocked 
me down, and even pushed Crispin rudely out of the 
room. Bowyer asked me why 1 had made myself 
such a fool ? to which I answered, that I had a great 
desire to be a shoemaker, and that I hated the thought 
of being a clergyman. " Why so ?" said he. — " Be- 
cause, to tell you the truth, sir," said I, " I am an infi- 
del !" For this, without more ado, Bowyer flogged 
me, — wisely, as I think, — soundly, as I know. Any 
whining or sermonizing would have gratified my vanity, 
and confirmed me in my absurdity ; as it was, I was 
laughed at, and got heartily ashamed of my folly. 



May 28, 1830. 

The Americans. 

I DEEPLY regret the anti-American articles of some 
of the leading reviews. The Americans regard what 

* See this instance cited, and the whole history and moral 
polic)' of the common system of judicial swearing examined with 
clearness and good feeling, in Mr. Tyler's late work on Oaths.— 
Editor. 



OF S. T. COLERIDGE. 109 

is said of them in England a thousand times more than 
they do any thing said of them in any other country. 
The Americans are excessively pleased with any kind 
or favourable expressions, and never forgive or forget 
any slight or abuse. It would be better for them if 
they were a trifle thicker-skinned. 



The last American war was to us only something to 
talk or read about ; but to the Americans it was the 
cause of misery in their own homes. 

I, for one, do not call the sod under my feet my 
country. But language, religion, laws, government, 
blood, — identity in these makes men of one country. 



May 29, 1830. 

Book of Job. 

The Book of Job is an Arab poem, antecedent to the 
Mosaic dispensation. It represents the mind of a 
good man not enlightened by an actual revelation, but 
seeking about for one. In no other book is the desire 
and necessity for a Mediator so intensely expressed. 
The personality of God, the I AM of the Hebrews, is 
most vividly impressed on the book, in opposition to 
Pantheism. 



I now think after many doubts, that the passage,* 
"I know that my Redeemer liveth," &c., may fairly 
be taken as a burst of determination, a quasi prophecy. 
" I know not how this can be ; but in spite of all my diffi- 
culties, this I do know, that I shall be recompensed." 



It should be observed, that all the imagery in the 
speeches of the men is taken from the East, and is no 
more than a mere representation of the forms of mate- 
rial nature. But when God speaks the tone is exalted, 
and almost all the images are taken from Egypt, the 

* Chap, xix., 25, 26. 
10 



1 10 TABLS-TALK 

crocodile, the war-hoo-se, and so forth. Egypt was 
then the tirst monarchy that had a splendid court. 



Satan, in the prologue, does not mean the devil, our 
Diaboliis. There is no calumny in his words. He is 
rather the circuitor^ the accusing spirit, a dramatic at- 
torney-general. But after the prologue, which was 
necessary to bring the imagination into a proper state 
for the dialogue, we hear no more of this Satan. 



Warburton's notion, that the Book of Job was of so 
late a date as Ezra, is wholly groundless. His only 
reason is this appearance of Satan. 



May 30, 1830. 

Translation of the Psalms. 

I WISH the Psalms were translated afresh ; or, rather, 
that the present version were revised. Scores of pas- 
sages are utterly incoherent as they now stand. If the 
primary visual images had been oftener preserved, the 
connexion and force of the sentences would have been 
better perceived,* 

* Mr. Coleridge, like so many of the elder divines of the Chris- 
tian church, had an affectionate reverence for the moral and evan- 
gelical portion of the Book of Psahns. He told me that, after 
having studied every {_:;ge of tlie Bible with the deepest attention, 
he had found no other part of Scripture come home so closely to 
his inmost yearnings and necessities. During many of his latter 
years he used to read ten or twelve verses every evening, ascer- 
taining (for his knowledge of Hebrew was enough for that) the 
exact visual image or first radical meaning of every noun substan- 
tive ; and he repeatedly expressed to me his surprise and pleasure 
at finding that in nine cases out of ten the bare primary sense, if 
literally rendered, threw great additional light on the text. He 
was not disposed to allow the prophetic or allusive character so 
largely as is done by Home and others ; but he acknowledged it 
in some instances m the fullest manner. In particular, ho rejected 
the local and temporary reference which has been given to the 
110th Psalm, and declared his belief in its deep mystical import 
with f&gatd to the Mccsiah. Mr. C. once gave me the following 



OF S. T. COLERIDGE. Ill * 

May 31, 1830. 

Ancient Mariner — Undine — Martin — Pilgrim'' s 

Progress. 

Mrs. Barbauld once told me that she admired the 
Ancient Mariner very much, but that there were two 
faults in it, — it was improbable, and had no moral. As 
for the probability, I owned that that might admit some 
question ; but as to the want of a moral, I told her that 
in my own judgment the poem had too much ; and that 
the only or chief fault, if I might say so, was the ob- 
trusion of the moral sentiment so openly on the reader 
as a principle or cause of action in a work of such 
pure imagination. It ought to have had no rnore moral 
than the Arabian Nights' tale of the merchant's sitting 
down to eat dates by the side of a well, and throwing 
the shells aside, and lo ! a geni starts up, and says he 
must kill the aforesaid merchant, because one of the 
date-shells had, it seems, put out the eye of the geni's 
son.* 

note upon the 22d Psalm, written by him, I believe, many years 
previously, but which, he said, he approved at that time. It will 
find as appropriate a niche here as anywhere else : — 

" I am much delighted and instructed .by the hypothesis, which 
I think prob.able, that our Lord in repeating^//, EH, lama sahac- 
thani, really recited the whole or a large part of the 22d Psalm. 
It is impossible to read that psalm without the liveliest feelings 
of love, gratitude, and sympathy. It is, indeed, a wonderful 
prophecy, whatever might or might not have been David's notion 
when he composed it. AVhether Christ did audibly repeat the 
whole or not, it is certain, I think, that he did it mentallv, and 
said aloud what was sufficient to enable his followers to do the 
same. Even at this day, to repeat in the same manner but the 
first line of a common hymn, would be understood as a reference 
to the whole. Above all, I am thankful for the thought which 
suggested itself to my mind while I was reading this"bea,utiful 
psalm, namely, that we should not exclusively think of Christ as 
the Logos united to human nature, but likewise as a perfect man 
united to the Logos. This distinction is most important in order 
to conceive, much more, appropriately to feel, the conduct and 
exertions of Jesus." — En. 

* " There he found, at the foot of a great walnut-tree, a foun- 
tain of a very clear running water, and alighting, tied his horse 



"T. 



112 TABLE-TALK 



I took the thought of ^^ grinning for joy^'' in that 
poem, from poor Burnett's* remark to me, when we 
had climbed to the top of Plinlimmon, and were nearly- 
dead w-^*:!! thirst. We could not speak from the con- 
striction, till we found a little puddle under a stone. 
He said to me, — " You grinned like an idiot !" He 
had done the same. 



Undine is a most exquisite work. It shows the 
general want of any sense for the fine and the subtle 

to a branch of a tree, and sitting down by the fountain, took some 
biscuits and dates oat of his poritnanteau, and, as he ate his dates, 
threw the shells about on both sides of him. When he had done 
eating, being a good Mussulman, he washed his hands, his face, 
and his feet, and said his prayers. He had not made an end, but 
was still on his knees, when he saw a geni appear, all white with 
age, and of a monstrous bulk; who, advancing towards him with a 
cnneter in his hand, spoke to hirn in a terrible voice thus : — ' Rise 
up, that I may kill thee with this cimeter as you have killed my 
son!' and accompanied these words with a frightful cry. The 
merchant being as much frightened at the hideous shape of the 
monster as at these threatening words, answered him trembling: 
— ' Alas ! my good lord, of what crime can I be guilty towards you 
that you should take away my life V — ' I will,' replies the geni, 
'kill thee, as thou hast killed my son!' — ' heaven!' says the 
merchant, ' how should I kill your son 1 I did not know him, nor 
ever saw him.' — ' Did not you sit down when you came hither 1' 
replies the geni. ' Did not you take dates out of your portman- 
teau, and, as you ate them, did not you throw the shells about on 
both sides? — ' I did all that you say,' answers the merchant, ' I 
cannot deny it.' — ' If it be so,' replied the geni, ' I tell thee that 
thou hast killed my son ; and the way was thus : when you threw 
the nutshells about, my son was passing by ; and you threw one 
of them into his eye, which killed him; therefore I must kill thee.' 
* Ah ! my good lord, pardon me !' cried the merchant. ' No par- 
don,' answers the geni, ' no mercy ! Is it not just to kill him 
that has killed another 1' — ' I agree to it,' says the merchant ; ' but 
certainly I never killed your son ; and if I have, it was unknown 
to me, and I did it innocently ; therefore I beg you to pardon me, 
and suffer me to live.' — ' No, no,' says the geni, persisting in his 
resolution, ' I must kill thee, since thou hast killed my son ;' and 
then taking the merchant by the arm, threw him with his face 
upon the ground, and lifted up his cimeter to cut off his head !"— 
The Merchant and the Geni, First Night. — Ed. 

* A Unitarian preacher, whose name will find its place in the 
Life of Coleridge. — Ed. 



OF S. T. CGLEKIL3S. 113 

in the public taste, that this romance made no deep 
impression. Undine's character, before she receives a 
soul, is marvellously beautiful.* 



It seems to me, that Martin never looks at nature 
except through bits of stained glass. He is never sat- 
isfied with any appearance that is not prodigious. He 
should endeavour to school his imagination into the 
apprehension of the true idea of the BeautifuLj 



This wood-cut of Slay-good| is admirable, to be 
sure ; but this new edition of the Pilgrim's Progress 
is too fine a' book for it. It should be much larger, 
and on sixpenny coarse paper. 



The Pilgrim's Progress is composed in the lowest 
style of English, Avithout slang or false grammar. If 

* Mr. Coleridge's admiration of this little romance v/as unbound- 
ed. He read it several times in German, and once in the English 
translation, made in America, I believe ; the latter he thought 
inadequately done. I think he must have read the English Un- 
dine, which I have, published in 1824, by E. Littell, Philadelphia, 
Mr. C. said there was something in Undine even beyond Scott, — 
that Scott's best characters and conceptions were composed; by 
w'lich I understood him to mean that Baillie Nicol Jarvie, for ex- 
ample, was made up of old particulars, and received its individu- 
ality from the author's power of fusion, being in the result an 
admirable product, as Corinthian brass was said to be the conflux 
of the spoils of a city. But Undine, he said, was one and single 
in projection, and had presented to his imagination, what Scott 
had never done, an absolutely new idea. — Ed. 

t Mr. Coleridge said this, after looking at the engravings of 
Mr- jMartin's two pictures of the Valley of the Shadow of Death, 
and the Celestial City, published in the beautiful edition of the 
Pilgrim's Progress by Messrs. Murray a.nd Major, in 1830. I wish 
Mr. Martin could have heard the poet's lecture : he would have 
been flattered, and at the same time, I believe, instructed ; for in 
the philosophy of painting Coleridge was a master. — Ed. 

t P. 350, by S. Mosses, from a design by Mr. W. Harvey. 
" When they came to the place where he was, they foord him 
with one Feeble-mind in his hand, whom his servant>^^ had brought 
unto him, havmg taken him in the way. Now th'^' gian: vwas 
rifling him, with a purpose, after that, to pick his bones ; for i* 
v^as of the nature of flesh-eaters." — Ed. 

10* 



114 TABLE-TALK 

you were to polish it, you would at once destroy the 
reality of the vision. For works of imagination should 
be written in very plain language ; the more purely im- 
aginative they are the more necessary it is to be plain. 

This wonderfn.l work is one of the few books which 
may be read over repeatedly at different times, and 
each time with a new and a different pleasure. I read 
it once as a theologian — and let me assure you, that 
there is great theological acumen in the work — once 
with devotional feelings — and once as a poet. I could 
not have believed beforehand that Calvinism could be 
painted in such exquisitely delightful colours.* 



June 1, 1830. 

Prayer — Church- Singing — Hooker — Dreams. 

There are three sorts of prayer: — -1. Public ; 2. 
Domestic ; 3. Solitary. Each has its peculiar uses 
and character. I think the church ought to publish and 
authorize a directory of forms for the latter two. Yet 
I fear the' execution would be inadequate. There is a 
great decay of devotional unction in the numerous books 
of prayers put out now-a-days. I really think the 
hawker was very happy, who blundered New Form of 
Prayer into New /orwjer Prayers. f 

* I find written on a blank leaf of my copy of this edition of 
the P.'s P. the following note by Mr. C. : — " I know of no book, 
the Bible excepted as above all comparison, which I, according to 
mtj judgment and experience, could so safely recommend as 
teaching and enforcing the whole saving truth according to the 
mind that was in Christ Jesus, as the Pilgrim's Progress. It is, 
in my conviction, incomparably the best sumrna iheologia evan- 
gelica ever produced by a writer not miraculously inspired." 
June 14, 1830.— Ed. 

t " I will add, at the risk of appearing to dwell too long on reli- 
gious topics, that on this my first introduction to Coleridge he 
reverted with strong compunction to a sentiment which he had 
expressed in earlier days upon prayer. In one of his youthful 
poems, speakmg of God, he had said, — 



J 



OF S- T. COLERIDGE. 11$ 

I exceedingly regret that our church pays so little 
attention to the subject of congregational singing. See 
how it is ! In that particular part ot the public M-^orship 
in which, more than in all the rest, the common people 
might, and ought to join — which, by its association 
with music, is meant to give a fitting vent and expres- 
sion to the emotions, — in that part we all sing as Jews ; 
or, at best, as mere men, in the abstract, without a 
Saviour. You know my veneration for the Book of 
Psalms, or most of it ; but with some half dozen ex- 
ceptions, the Psalms are surely not adequate vehicles 
of Christian thanksgiving and joy ! Upon this defi- 
ciency in our service, Wesley and Whitefield seized ; 
and you know it is the hearty congregational singing of 

*' ' Of whose all-seeing eye 

Aught to demand were impotence of mind.' 

This sentiment he novr so utterly condemned, that, on the con- 
trary, he told me, as his own peculiar opinion, that the act of 
praying was the very highest energy of which the human heart 
was capable ; praying, that is, v»ith the total concentration of the 
faculties ; and the great mass of worldly men and of learned men, 
he pronounced absolutely incapable of prayer." — Taifs Maga- 
z ne, September, 1834, p. 515. 

Mr. Coleridge within two years of his death very solemnly de- 
clared to me his conviction upon the same subject. I was sitting 
by his bedside one afternoon, and he fell, an unusual thing for 
him, into a long account of many passages of his past life, lament- 
ing some things, condemning others, but complaining withal, 
though very gently, of the way in which many of his most innocent 
acts had been cruelly misrepresented. " But I have no diffi- 
culty," said he, " in forgiveness ; indeed, I know not how to say 
with sincerity the clause in the Lord's Prayer, which asks for- 
giveness as we forgive. I feel nothing answering to it in my 
heart. Neither do I find, or reckon, the most solemn faith in 
God as a real object, the most arduous act of the reason and will ; 
O no ! my dear, it is to pray, to pray as God would have us ; 
this is what at times makes me turn cold to my soul. Believe 
me, to pray with all your heart and strength, with the reason and 
the will, to believe vividly that God will listen to your voice 
through Christ, and verily do the thing he pleaseth thereupon — 
this is the last, the greatest achievement of the Christian's war- 
fare on earth. Teach us to pray, Lord !" And then he burst 
into a flood of tears, and begged me to pray for him. what a 
dight was there !— Ed. 



116 TABLE-TALK 

Christian hymns which keeps the humbler Methodists 
together. Luther did as much for the Reformation by 
his hymns as by his translation of the Bible. In Ger- 
many, the hymns are known by heart by every peasant : 
they advise, they argue from the hymns, and every 
soul in the church praises God, like a Christian, with 
words which are natural and yet sacred to his mind. 
No doubt this defect in our service proceeded from the 
dread which the English Reformers had of being 
charged with introducnig any thing into the worship of 
God but the text of Scripture. 



Hooker said, that by looking for that in the Bible 
which it is impossible that any book can have, we lose 
the benehts which we might reap from its being the 
best of all books. 



You will observe, that even in dreams, nothing is 
fancied without an antecedent quasi cause. It could 
not be otherwise. 



June 4, 1830. 

Jeremy Taylor — English Reformation. 

Taylor's* was a great and lovely piind ; yet how 

* Mr. Coleridge placed Jeremy Taylor among the four great 
geniuses of old English literature. I think he used to reckon 
Shakspeare and Bacon, Milton and Taylor, four-square, each 
against each. In mere eloquence, he thought the Bishop with- 
out any fellow. He called him Chrysostom. Further, he loved 
the man, and was anxious to find excuses for some weak parts in 
his character. But Mr. Coleridge's assent to Taylor's views of 
many of the lundamentdl positions of Christianity was very lim- 
ited ; and, indeed, he considered him as the least sound in point 
of doctrine of any of the old divines, comprehending within that 
designation the writers to the middle of Charles II. 's reign. He 
speaks of Taylor in the Friend in the following terms : — " Among 
the numerous examples with which I might enforce this warning, 
I refer, not without reluctance, to the most eloquent, and one of 
the most learned, of our divmes ; a rigorist, indeed, concerning 
the authority of the church, but a latitudinarian in the articles of 
its faith ; who stretched the latter almost to the advanced posts of 



•<« 



1 



OF S. T. COLERIDGE. 117 

much and injuriously was it perverted by his being a 
favourite and follower of Laud, and by his intensely 
Popish feelings of church authority. His Liberty of 
Prophesying is a work of wonderful eloquence and 
skill ; but if we believe the argument, what do we 
come to ? Why, to nothing more or less than this, 
that — so much can be said for every opinion and sect, 
so impossible is it to settle any thing by reasoning or 
authority of Scripture — vve must appeal to some posi- 
tive jurisdiction on earth, ut sit finis controversarium. 
In fact, the whole book is the precise argument used 
by the Papists to induce men to admit the necessity 
of a supreme and infallible head of the church on earth. 
It is one of the works which pre-eminently gives coun- 
tenance to the saying of Charles or James II., I forget 
which : — " When you of the Church of England con- 
tend with the Catholics, you use the arguments of the 
Puritans ; when you contend with the Puritans, you 
immediately adopt all the weapons of the Catholics.'* 
Taylor never speaks with the slightest symptom of 
affection or respect of Luther, Calvin, or any other 
of the great reformers — at least, not in any of his 
learned works ; but he saints every trumpery monk or 
friar, down to the very latest canonizations by the 
modern Popes. I fear you will think me harsh, when 
I say that I believe Taylor was, perhaps unconsciously, 
half a Socinian in heart. Such a strange inconsist- 
ency would not be impossible. The Romish church 
has produced many such devout Socinians. The cross 
of Christ is dimly seen in Taylor's works. Compare 
hiui in this particular with Donne, and you will iQG\ 
the difference in a moment. Why is not Donne's vol- 
ume of sermons reprinted at Oxford ?* 

Socinianism, and strained the former to a hazardous conformity 
with the assumptions of the Roman hierarchy." — Vol. ii., p. 108. 

I may take this opportunity of stating that anew edition of the 
Friend is in preparation, the text of which will present the nu- 
merous corrections made at different times by Mr. Coleridge in 
his own copy, and will be accompanied by many very interesting 
notes expressive of his own views and feelings. — Ed. 

* Why not, indeed ! It is really quite unaccountable that th© 



118 TABLE-TALK 

In the reign of Edward VI., the Reformers feared 
to admit almost any thing on human authority alone. 
They had seen and felt the abuses consequent on the 
Popish theory of Christianity ; and I doubt not they 
wished and intended to reconstruct the religion and 
the church, as far as was possible, upon the plan of 
the primitive ages. But the Puritans pushed this bias 
to an absolute bibliolatry. They would not put on a 
corn-plaster without scraping a text over it. Men of 
learning, however, soon felt that this was wrong in the 
other extreme, and indeed united itself to the very 
abuse it seemed to shun. They saw that a knowledge 
of the Fathers, and of early tradition, was absolutely 
necebsary ; and unhappily, in many instances, the ex- 
cess of the Puritans drove the men of learning into 
the old Popish extreme of denying the Scriptures to be 
capable of affording a rule of faith without the dog- 
mas of the church. Taylor is a striking instance how 
far a Protestant might be driven in this direction. 



Jux\E 6, 1830. 

Catholicity — Gnosis — TcrtuUian — St. John. 

In the first century catholicity was the test of a book 
or epistle — whether it were of the Evangelicon or 
Apostolicon — being canonical. This catholic spirit 
was opposed to the gnostic or peculiar spirit— the hu- 
mour of fantastical interpretation of the old Scriptures 
into Christian meanings. It is this gnosis, or know- 
ingnessj which the Apostle says puffeth up — not knowl- 

sermons of this great divine of the English church should be so 
little known as they are, even to very literary clergymen of the 
present day. It might have been expected tliat the sermons of 
the greatest preacher of his age, the admired of Ben Jonson, Sel- 
den, and all that splendid band of poets and scholars, would even 
as curiosities have been reprinted, when works which are curious 
for nothing are every year sent forth afresh under the most au- 
thoritative auspices. Dr. Donne was educated at both Universi- 
ties, at Hart Hall, Oxford, first, and aftr-rwc.id at Cambridge, but 
fit what college, Walton does not mention. — Ed. 



OF S. T. COLERIDGE. Il9 

€dge^ as we translate it. The Epistle of Barnabas, 
of the genuineness of which I have no sort of doubt, 
is an example of this gnostic spirit. The Epistle to 
the Hebrews is the only instance of gnosis in the 
canon : it was written evidently by some apostolical 
man before the destruction of the Temple, and prob- 
ably at Alexandria. For three hundred years and 
more, it was not admitted into the canon, especially 
not by the Latin church, on account of this difTerence 
in it from the other Scriptures. But its merit was so 
great, and the gnosis in it is so kept within due bounds, 
that its admirers at last succeeded, especially by affix- 
ing St. Paul's name to it, to have it included in the 
canon ; which was fh*st done, I think, by the Council 
of Laodicea, in the middle of the fourth century. For- 
tunately for us it was so. 



I beg Tertullian's pardon ; but among his many 
bravuras, he says something about St. Paul's autograph. 
Origen expressly declares the reverse. 



It is delightful to think that the beloved Apostle was 
born a Plato. To him was left the almost oracular 
utterance of the mysteries of the Christian religion ;* 
while to St. Paul was committed the task of explana- 
tion, defence, and assertion of all the doctrines, and 
especially of those metaphysical ones touching the 
will and grace ; for which purpose his active mind, his 
learned education, and his Greek logic, made him pre- 
eminently fit. 



June 7, 1830 

Principles of a Review — Party Spirit. 
Notwithstanding what you say, I am persuaded that 

* " The imperative and oracular form of the inspired Scripture 
is the form of reason itself, in all things purely rational and 
moral." — Statesman's Manual, p. 23. 



120 TABLE-TALK 

a review would amply succeed, even now, which should 
be started upon a published code of principles, critical, 
moral, pohtical, and religious ; which should announce 
what sort of books it would review, namely, works of 
literature^ as contra-distinguished from all that offspring 
of the press, which in the present age supplies food 
for the craving caused by the extended ability of read- 
ing without any correspondent education of the mind, 
and which formerly Avas done by conversation ; and 
which should really give a fair account of what the 
author intended to do, and in his own words, if possi- 
ble ; and in addition, afford one or two fair specimens 
of the execution — itself never descending for one mo- 
ment to any personality. It should also be provided 
before the commencement with a dozen powerful arti- 
cles upon fundamental topics, to appear in succession. 
By such a plan I raised the sale of the Morning Post 
from an inconsiderable number to 7,000 a day, in the 
course of one year. You see the great reviewers are 
now ashamed of reviewing works in the old style, and 
have taken up essay-writing instead. Hence arose 
such publications as the Literary Gazette, which are 
set up for the purpose — not a useless one — of adver- 
tising new books of all sorts for the circulating libra- 
ries. A mean between the two extremes still remains 
to be taken. I profoundly revere Blanco White ; his 
Doblado's Letters are exquisite ; but his Review* was 
commenced without a single apparent principle to di- 
rect it, and with the absurd disclaimer of certain public 
topics of discussion. 

Party men always hate a slightly difTering friend 
more than a downright enemy. I quite calculate on 
my being one day or other holden in worse repute by 
many Christians than the Unitarians and open infidels. 
It must be undergone by every one who loves the truth 
for its own sake beyond all other things. 

* The London Review, of which two numbers appeared in 
1828, 1829.— Ed. 



OF S. T. COLERIDGE. 121 

Truth is a good dog ; but beware of backing too 
close to the heels of an error, lest you get your brains 
kicked out. 



June 10, 1830. 

Souther/' s Life of Bunyan — Laud — Puritans and Cav- 
alters — Presbyterians,, Independents, and Bishops. 

South ey's Life of Bunyan is beautiful. I wish he 
had illustrated that mood of mind which exaggerates, 
and still more, mistakes, the inward depravation, as in 
Bunyan, Nelson, and others, by extracts from Baxter's 
Life of himself. What genuine superstition is exem- 
plified in that bandying of texts and half texts, and 
demi-semi texts, just as memory happened to suggest 
them, or chance brought them before Bunyan's mind ! 
His tract, entitled, " Grace abounding to the Chief of 
Sinners,"* is a study for a philosopher. Is it not, 
however, an historical error to call the Puritans dis- 
senters ? Before St. Bartholomew's day they were 
essentially a part of the church, and had as determined 
opinions in favour of a church establishment as the 
bishops themselves. 



Laud was not exactly a Papist, to be sure ; but he 
was on the road, with the church with him, to a point, 
where declared Popery would have been inevitable. A 
wise and vigorous Papist king would very soon, and 
very justifiably too, in that case, have eflected a recon- 
ciliation between the churches of Rome and England, 
when the line of demarcation had become so very faint. 



The faults of the Puritans were many ; but surely 
their morality will, in general, bear comparison with 
that of the Cavaliers after the Restoration. 

* Grace abounding to the Chief of Sinners, in a faithful Ac- 
count of the Life and Death of John Bunyan, (Sec. 

Vol. L— F 11 



1 22 TABLE-TALK 

The Presbyterians hated the Independents much 
more than they did the bishops, which induced them 
to co-operate in effecting the Restoration. 

The conduct of the bishops towards Charles, while 
at Breda, was wise and constitutional. They knew, 
however, that when the forms of the constitution were 
once restored, all their power would revive again as 
of course. 



June 14, 1830. 

Study of the Bible. 

Intense study of the Bible will keep any writer 
from being vulgar, in point of style. 



June 15, 1830. 

Rabelais — Swift — Bentley — Burnet. 

Rabelais is a most wonderful writer. Pantagruel 
is the Reason ; Panurge the Understanding, — the pol- 
larded man, the man with every facuUy except the 
reason. I scarcely know an example more illustrative 
of the distinction between the two. Rabelais had no 
mode of speaking the truth in those days but in such a 
form as this ; as it was, he was indebted to the King's 
protection for his life. Some of the commentators talk 
about his book being all political ; there are contem- 
porary politics in it, of course, but the real scope is 
much higher and more philosophical. It is in vain to 
look about for a hidden meaning in all that he has 
written ; you will observe, that after any particularly 
deep thrust, as the Papimania,* for example, Rabelais, 

* B. iv., c. 48. " Comment Pantagruel descendit en ITsle de 
Papimanes." See the five following chapters, especially c. 50 ; 
and note also c. 9 of the fifth book ; " Comment nous fut mon- 
etre Papegaut a grande difficulte." — Ed. 



OF S. T. COLERIDGE. 123 

as if to break the blow, and to appear unconscious of 
what he has done, writes a chapter or two of pure 
buffoonery. He every now and then flashes you a 
ghmpse of a real face from his magic lantern, and then 
buries the whole scene in mist. The morality of the 
work is of the most refined and exalted kind ; as for 
the manners, to be sure, I cannot say much. 



Swift was anima Rahdaisii habitans in sicco, — the 
soul of Rabelais dwelling in a dry place. 



Yet Swift was rare. Can any thing beat his remark 
on King William's motto, — Recepit, non rapuit, — " that 
the Receiver was as bad as the Thief?" 



The effect of the Tory wits attacking Bentley with 
such acrimony has been to make them appear a set of 
shallow and incompetent scholars. Neither Bentley 
nor Burnet suffered from the hostihty of the wits. 
Burnet's " History of his own Times" is a truly valu- 
able book. His credulity is great, but his simplicity 
is equally great ; and he never deceives you for a 
moment. 



June 25, 1830. 

Giotto — Painting, 
The fresco paintings by Giotto* and others, in the 

* Giotto, or Angiolotto's birth is fixed by Vasari in 1276. but 
there is some reason to think that he was born a little earlier. 
Dante, who was his friend, was born in 1265. Giotto was the 
pupil of Cimabue, whom he entirely eclipsed, as Dante testifies 
in the well-known lines in the Purgatorio : — 
" vana gloria dell' umane posse I 
Com' poco verde in sir la cima dura, 
Se non e giunta dall' etati grosse ! 
Credette Cimabue nella pintura 

Tener lo campo : ed ora ha Giotto il grido, 
Si che la fama di colui oscura." — C. xi., v. 91. 

F2 



124 TABLE-TALK 

cemetery at Pisa, are most noble. Giotto was a con- 
temporary of Dante ; and it is a curious question, 
whether the painters borrowed from the poet, or vice 
versd. Certainly M. Angelo and Raffael fed their 
imaginations highly with these grand drawings, espe- 
cially M. Angelo, who took from them his bold yet 
graceful lines. 

People may say what they please about the gradual 
improvement of the Arts. It is not true of the sub- 
stance. The Arts and the Muses both spring forth in 
the youth of nations, like Minerva from the front of 
Jupiter, all armed : manual dexterity may, indeed, be 
improved by practice. 

Painting went on in power till, in Raffael, it attained 
the zenith, and in him too it showed signs of a tenden- 
cy downwards by another path. The painter began to 
think of overcoming difficulties. After this the de- 
scent was rapid, till sculptors began to work inveterate 
likenesses of periwigs in marble, — as see Algarotti's 
tomb in the cemetery at Pisa, — and painters did noth- 
ing but copy, as well as they could, the external face 
of nature. Now, in this age, we have a sort of revivis- 
cence, — not, I fear, of the power, but of a taste for the 
power, of the early limes. 



June 26, 1830. 

Seneca. 

You may get a motto for every sect in religion, or 
line of thought in morals or philosophy, from Seneca ; 
but nothing is ever thought out by him. 

His six great frescoes in the cemetery at Pisa are upon the suffer- 
ings and patience of Job. — Ed. 



OF S. T. COLERIDGE. 125 

JuLV 2, 1830. 
Plato — Aristotle. 

Every man is born an Aristotelian or a Platonist. 
I do not think it possible that any one born an Aristo- 
telian can become a Platonist ; and I am sure no born 
Platonist can ever change into an Aristotelian. They 
are the two classes of men, beside which it is next to 
impossible to conceive a third. The one considers 
reason a quality, or attribute ; the other considers it a 
power, I believe that Aristotle never could get to un- 
derstand what Plato meant by an idea. There is a 
passage, indeed, in the Eudemian Ethics which looks 
like an exception ; but I doubt not of its being spurious, 
as that whole work is supposed by some to be. V/ith 
Plato ideas are constitutive in themselves.* 

Aristotle \vas, and still is, the sovereign lord of the 
understanding ; — the faculty judging by the senses. 
He was a conceptualist, and never could raise him- 
self into that higher state v*hich was natural to Plato, 
and has been so to others, in which the understanding 
is distinctly contemplated, and, as it were, looked down 
upon from the throne of actual ideas, or living, inborn, 
essential truths. 



Yet what a mind was Aristotle's — only not the great- 

* Mr. Coleridge said the Eudemian Ethics; but I half suspect 
he must have meant the Metaphysics, although I do not know th.at 
all the fourteen books under that title have been considered non- 
genuine. The 'HQiKu EvSijiifia are not Aristotle's. To what pas- 
sage in particular allusion is here made, I cannot exactly say ; 
many might be alleged, but not one seems to express the true Pla- 
tonic idea, a% Mr. Coleridge used to understand it ; and as, I be- 
lieve, he ultimately considered ideas in his own philosophy. Four- 
teen or fifteen years previously, he seems to have been undecided 
upon this point. " Whether," he says, " ideas are regulative 
only, according to Aristotle and Kant, or likewise constitutive, and 
one with the power and Ufe of nature, according to Plato and Plo- 
tinus {Iv \6ycd ^ii)f] ^v, koX t) ^w^ ?iv to (puis tu>v avdpuTuyv), is the 
highest problem of philosophy, and not part of its nomenclature." 
— Essay (E) in the Appendix to the Statesman'' s Manual, 1816. 
— Editor. 

11* 



126 TABLE-TALK 

est that ever animated the human form ! — the parent 
of science, properly so called, the master of criticism, 
and the founder or editor of logic ! But he confounded 
science with philosophy, which is an error. Philos- 
ophy is the middle state between science, or knowl- 
edge, and sophia, or wisdom. 



July 4, 1830. 

Duke of Wellington — Moneyed Interest — Canning* 

I SOMETIMES fear the Duke of Wellington is too 
much disposed to imagine that he can govern a great 
nation by word of command, in the same way in which 
he governed a highly disciplined army. He seems to 
be unaccustomed to, and to despise, the inconsistencies, 
the weaknesses, the bursts of heroism followed by pros- 
tration and cowardice, which invariably characterize 
all popular efforts. He forgets that, after all, it is from 
such efforts that all the great and noble institutions of 
the world have come ; and that, on the other hand, the 
discipline and organization of araiies have been only 
like the flight of the cannon-ball, the object of which 
is destruction.* 



The stock-jobbing and moneyed interest is so strong 
in this country, that it has more than once prevailed 
in our foreign councils over national honour and na- 
tional justice. The country gentlemen are not slow 
to join in this influence. Canning felt this very keen- 
ly, and said he was unable to contend against the city 
train-bands. 

* Straight forward goes 

The lightning's path, and straight the fearful path 
Of the cannon-ball. Direct it flies and rapid, 
Shattering that it may reach, and shattering what it reaches 
Wallenstein, part i., act i., sc. 4. 



of s. t. coleridge. 127 

July 6, 1830. 

Bourrienne. 

BouRRiENNE IS admirable. He is the French Pepys, 
' — a man with right feelings, but always wishing to par- 
ticipate in what is going on, be it what it may. He 
has one remark, when comparing Bonaparte with 
Charlemagne, the substance of which I have attempted 
to express in " The Friend,"* hut which Bourrienne 
has condensed into a sentence worthy of Tacitus, or 
Machiavel, or Bacon. It is this ; that Charlemagne 
was above his age, while Bonaparte was only above 
his competitors, but under his age ! Bourrienne has 
done more than any one else to show Bonaparte to 
the world as he really was, — always contemptible ex- 
cept when acting a part, and that part not his own. 



Julys, 1830. 

Jews. 

The other day I was what you would called ^oorec? 
by a Jew. He passed me several times, crying for 
old clothes in the most nasal and extraordinary tone I 
ever heard. At last I was so provoked, that I said to 
him, " Pray, why can't you say ' old clothes' in a plain 
way, as I do now V The Jew stopped, and, looking 
very gravely at me, said, in a clear and even fine accent, 
" Sir, I can say ' old clothes' as well as you can ; but 
if you had to say so ten times a minute, for an hour 
together, you would say ogh do, as I do now ;" and so 
he marched off. I was so confounded with the justice 
of his retort, that I followed, and gave him a shilling, 
the only one I had. 

1 have had a good deal to do with Jews in the course 
of my life, although I never borrowed any money of 
them. Once I sat in a coach opposite a Jew — a symbol 

* Vol. i., Essay 12, p. 133. 



1 28 TABLE-TALK 

of old clothes bags — an Isaiah of Hollywell-street. 
He would close the window ; I opened it ; he closed 
it again : upon which, in a very solemn tone, 1 said to 
him, " Son of Abraham ! thou smellest ; son of Isaac ! 
thou art offensive ; son of Jacob ! thou stinkest foully. 
See the man in the moon ! he is holding his nose at 
thee at that distance. Dost thou think that I, sitting 
here, can endure it any longer?" My Jew was as- 
tounded, opened the window forthwith himself, and said 
" he was sorry he did not know before I was so great 
a gentleman." 



July 24, 1830. 

The Papacy and the Reformation — Leo X. 

During the middle ages, the papacy was nothing, 
in fact, but a confederation of the learned men in the 
west of Europe against the barbarism and ignorance 
of tiie times. The pope was chief of this confederacy : 
and so long as he retained that character exclusively, 
his power was just and irresistible. It was the prin- 
cipal means of preserving for us and for all posterity all 
that we now have of the illumination of past ages. But 
as soon as the pope made a separation between his 
character as premier clerk in Christendom and as a 
secular prince — as soon as he began to squabble for 
tOivvns and castles — then he at once broke the charm, 
and gave birth to a revolution. From that moment 
those who remained firm to the cause of truth and 
knowledge became necessarily enemies to the Roman 
see. The great British schoolmen led the way ; then 
WiclifTe rose, Huss, Jerome, and others. In short, 
everyv/here, but especially throughout the north of Eu- 
rope, the breach of feeling and sympathy Avent on 
widening ; so that all Germany, England, Scotland, 
and other countries, started like giants out of their 
sleep at the first blast of Luther's trumpet. In France 
one half of the people, and that the most wealthy and 



OF S. T. COLERIDGE. 129 

enlightened, embraced the Reformation. The seeds 
of it were deeply and widely spread in Spain and in 
Italy ; and as to the latter, if James I. had been an 
Elizabeth, I have no doubt at all that Venice would 
have publicly declared itself against Kome. It is a 
profound question to answer, why it is that, since the 
middle of the sixteenth century, the Reformation has 
not advanced one step in Europe ? 



In the time of Leo X., atheism, or infidelity of some 
sort, was almost universal in Italy among the high dig- 
nitaries of the Romish church. 



July 27, 1830. 

Thclwall— Swift— Stella. 

John Thf.lwall had something very good about 
him. We were once sitting in a beautiful recess in 
the Quantocks, when I said to him, " Citizen John, this 
is a fine place to talk treason in !" " Nay, Citizen 
Samuel," replied he, "it is rather a place to make a 
man forget that there is any necessity for treason !" 



Thelwall thought it very unfair to influence a child's 
mind by inculcating any opinions before it should have 
come to years of discretion, and be able to choose for 
itself. I showed him my garden, and told him it was 
my botanical garden. " How so ?" said he ; " it is 
covered with weeds." " Oh," I replied, " that is only 
because it has not yet come to its age of discretion 
and choice. The weeds, you see, have taken the lib- 
erty to grow, and I thought it unfair in me to prejudice 
the soil towards roses and strawberries." 



I think Swift adopted the name of Stella, which is a 
man's name with a feminine termination, to denote the 
mysterious epicene relation in which poor Miss John- 
ston stood to him. 

F3 




130 TABLE-TALK 

July 28, 1830. 

Iniquitous Legislation, 

That legislation is iniquitous which sets law in con- 
flict with the common and unsophisticated feelings of 
our nature. If I were a clergyman in a smuggling 
town, I would not preach against smuggling. I would 
not be made a sort of clerical revenue officer. Let the 
government, which by absurd duties fosters smuggling, 
prevent it itself, if it can. How could I show my hear- 
ers the immorality of going twenty miles in a boat, and 
honestly buying with their money a keg of brandy, 
except by a long deduction which they could not un- 
derstand ? But were I in a place where wrecking went 
on, see if I would preach on any thing else ! 



July 29, 1830. 

Spurzheim and Craniology. 

Spurzheim is a good man, and I like him ; but he 
is dense, and the most ignorant German I ever knew. 
If he had been content with stating certain remarkable 
coincidences between the moral qualities and the con- 
figuration of the scull, it would have been w^ell ; but 
when he began to map out the cranium dogmatically, 
he fell into infinite absurdities. You know that every 
intellectual act, however you may distinguish it by- 
name, in respect to the originating faculties, is truly 
the act of the entire man : the notion of distinct mate- 
rial organs, therefore, in the brain itself, is plainly ab- 
surd. Pressed by this, Spurzheim has at length been 
guilty of some sheer quackery ; and ventures to say 
that he has actually discovered a difl^erent material in 
the diff'erent parts or organs of the brain, so that he 
can tell a piece of benevolence from a bit of destruc- 
tiveness, and so forth. Observe, also, that it is con- 
stantly found, that so far from there being a concavity 
in the interior surface of the cranium answering to the 



OF S. T. COLERIDGE. 131 

convexity apparent on the exterior, the interior is con- 
vex too. Dr. Baillie thought there was something in 
the system, because the notion of the brain being an 
extendible net, helped to explain those cases where 
the intellect remained after the solid substance of the 
bram was dissolved in water.* 



That a greater or less development of the forepart 
of the head is generally coincident with more or less 
of reasoning power, is certain. The line across the 
forehead also, denoting musical power, is very common. 



August 20, 1830. 

French Revolution, 1830 — Captain B. Hall and the 
Americans, 

The French must have greatly improved under the 
influence of a free and regular government (for such it 
in general has been since the restoration), to have con- 
ducted themselves with so much moderation in success 
as they seem to have done, and to be disponed to do. 

* " The very marked, positive as well as comparative, magni- 
tude and prominence of tlie bump entitled henevolevce (see Spurz- 
heim's map of ihr. human scull) on the head of the late Mr. John 
Thurtell, has wofuUy unsettled the faith of many ardent phrenolo- 
gists, and strengthened the previous doubts of a still greater num- 
ber into utter disbelief. On my mind this fact {for a fact it is) pro- 
duced the directly contrary effect ; and inclined me to suspect, 
for the first time, that there may be some truth in the Spurzheimian 
scheme. Whether future craniologists may not see cause to new- 
name this and one or two others of these convex gnomons, is quite 
a different question. At present, and according to the present 
use of words, any such change would be premature ; and we must 
be content to say, that Mr. Thurtell's benevolence was insuffi- 
ciently modified by the unprotrusive and unindicated convoUites 
of the brain, that secrete honesty and common sense. The or- 
gan of destructiveness yvas indirectly potentiated by the absence 
or imperfect development of the glands of reason and conscience 
in this * unfortu7iaie gentleman.'' " — Aids to Reflection, p. 143, n. 



1 32 TABLE-TALK 

I must say I cannot see much in Captain B. Hall's 
account of the Americans but weaknesses — some of 
which make me like the Yankees all the better. How 
much more amiable is the American fidgetiness and 
anxiety about the opinion of other nations, and espe- 
cially of the English, than the John BuUism which 
affects to despise the sentiments of the rest of tho 
world.* 

* " There exists in England a gentlemanly character, a gentle- 
manly feeUng very difterent even from that, which is the most 
like it — the character of a well-born Spaniard, and unexampled in . 
the rest of Europe. This feeling originated in the fortunate cir- tjfi 
cumstance, that the titles of our English nobility follow the law 
of their property, and are inherited by the eldest sons only. From 
this source, under the influences of our constitution and of our 
astonishing trade, it has diffused itself in different modifications 
through the whole country. The uniformity of our dress among 
all classes above that of the day labourer, while it has authorized 
all ranks to assume the appearance of gentlemen, has at the same 
time inspired the wish to conform their manners, and still more 
their ordinary actions in social intercourse, to their notions of the 
gentlemanly ; the most commonly received attribute of which char- 
acter is a certain generosity in trifles. On the other hand, the 
encroachments of the lower classes on the higher, occasioned and 
favoured by this resemblance in exteriors, by this absence of any 
cognizable marks of distinction, have rendered each class more 
reserved and jealous in their general communion ; and, far more 
than our climate or natural temper, have caused that haughtiness 
and reserve in our oxitw^rd demeanour, which is so generally com- 
plained of among foreigners. Far be it from me to depreciate the 
value of this gentlemanly feeling : I respect it under all its forms 
and varieties, from the House of Commons* to the gentlemen in 
the one shilling gallery. It is always the ornament of virtue, and 
oftentimes a support ; but it is a wretched substitute for it. Its 
worth, as a moral good, is by no means in proportion to its value 
as a social advantage. These observations are not irrelevant : for 
to the want of reflection that this diff'usion of gentlemanly feeling 
among us is not the growth of our moral excellence, but the effect 
of various accidental advantages peculiar to England ; to our not 
considering that it is unreasonable and uncharitable to expect the 
same consequences, where the same causes have not existed to 
produce them ; and lastly, to our proneness to regard the absence 
of this character (which, as I have before said, does, for the 
greater part, and in the common apprehension, consist in a cer- 

* This w^as written long before the Reform Act. — Ed, 



OF S. T. COLERIDGE. 133 

As to what Captain Hall says about the EngHsh 
loyaky to the person of the King — I can only say, I 
feel none of it. I respect the man, while, and only 
while, the king is translucent through him: I reverence 
the glass case for the Saint's sake within ; except for 
that, it is to me mere glaziers' work, — putty, and glass, 
and wood. 



September 8, 1830. 

English Reformation. 

The fatal error into which the peculiar character 
of the English Reformation threw our Church, has 
borne bitter fruit ever since, — I mean that of its clinging 
to court and state, instead of cultivating the people. 
The church ought to be a mediator between the people 
and the government, between the poor and the rich. 
As it is, I fear the church has let the hearts of the 
common people be stolen from it. See how different- 
ly the Church of Rome — wiser in its generation — has 
always acted in this particular. For a long time past 
the Church of England seems to me to have been 
blighted with prudence, as it is called. I wish with 
all my heart we had a little zealous imprudence. 



September 19, 1830. 

Democracy — Idea of a State — Church. 
It has never yet been seen, or clearly announced, 

tain frankness and generosity in the detail of action) as decisive 
against the sum total of personal or national worth ; we must, I 
am convinced, attribute a large portion of that conduct, which in 
many instances has left the inhabitants of countries conquered or 
appropriated by Great Britain doubtful, whether the various solid 
advantages which they have derived from our protection and just 
government were not bought dearly by the wounds inflicted on 
their feelings and prejudices, by the contemptuous and insolent 
demeanour of the English, as individuals." — Friend^ vol. iii., p. 
322. 

12 



134 TABLE-TALK 

that democracy, as such, is no proper element in the 
constitution of a state. The idea of a state is un- 
doubtedly a government U rav uplrrm — an aristoc- 
racy. Democracy is the healthful life-blood which cir- 
culates through the veins and arteries, which supports 
the system, but which ought never to appear externally, 
and as the mere blood itself. 



A state, in idea, is the opposite of a church. A 
state regards classes, and not individuals ; and it esti- 
mates classes, not by internal merit, but external ac- 
cidents ; as property, birth, &;c. But a church does the 
reverse of this, and disregards all external accidents, 
and looks at men as individual persons, allowing no 
gradation of ranks, but such as greater or less wisdom, 
learning, and holiness ought to confer. A church is, 
therefore, in idea, the only pure democracy. The 
church, so considered, and the state, exclusively of the 
church, constitute together the idea of a state in its 
largest sense. 



September 20, 1830. 

Government — French Gendarmerie. 

All temporal government must rest on a compro- 
mise of interests and abstract rights. Who would 
listen to the county of Bedford, if it were to declare it- 
self disannexed from the British empire, and to set up 
for itself ? 



The most desirable thing that can happen to France, 
with her immense army of gens d'armes, is, that the 
service may at first become very irksome to the men 
themselves, and ultimately, by not being called into real 
service, fall into general ridicule, like our trained bands. 
The evil in France, and throughout Europe, seems 
now especially to be, the subordination of the legisla- 
tive power to the direct physical force of the people. 



OF S. . COLERIDGE. 135 

The French legislature was weak enough before the 
late revolution ; now it is absolutely powerless, and 
manifestly depends even for its existence on the will 
of a popular commander of an irresistible army. There 
is now in France a daily tendency to reduce the legis- 
lative body to a mere deputation from the provinces 
•tind towns. 



September 21, 1830. 

Philosophy of Young Men at the Present Day. 

1 DO not know whether I deceive myself, but it 
seems to me that the young men who were my con- 
temporaries, fixed certain principles in their minds, 
and followed them out to their legitimate consequences, 
in a way which I rarely witness now. No one seems 
to have any distinct convictions, right or wrong ; the 
mind is completely at sea, rolling and pitching on the 

waves of facts and personal experiences. Mr. 

is, I suppose, one of the rising young men of the day ; 
yet he went on talking, the other evening, and making 
remarks with great earnestness, some of which were 
palpably irreconcilable with each other. He told me 
that facts gave birth to, and were, the absolute ground 
of principles ; to which I said, that unless he had a 
principle of selection, he would not have taken notice 
of those facts upon which he grounded his principle. 
You must have a lantern in your hand to give light, 
otherwise all the materials in the world are useless, 
for you cannot fmd them, and if you could, you could 

not arrange them. " But then," said Mr. , " that 

principle of selection came from facts !" — " To be 
sure !" I replied ; " but there must have been again an 
antecedent light to see those antecedent facts. The 
relapse may be carried in imagination backwards for 
ever, — l3ut go back as you may, you cannot come to a 
man without a previous aim or principle.'' He then 
asked me what I had to say to Bacon's Induction : I 
told him I had a good deal to say, if need were ; but 



136 TABLE-TALK 

that it was perhaps enough for the occasion to remark, 
that what he was very evidently taking for the Baconian 
/nduction, was mere Deduction — a very different thing.* 



September 22, 1830. 

Thucydides and Tacitus — Poetry — Modern Metre. 

The object of Thucydides was to show the ills re- 
sulting to Greece from the separation and conflict of 
the spirits or elements of democracy and oligarchy. 
The object of Tacitus was to demonstrate the desperate 
consequences of the loss of liberty on the minds and 
hearts of men. 



A poet ought not to pick nature's pocket : let him 
borrow, and so borrow as to repay by the very act of 
borrowing. Examine nature accurately, but write from 
recollection ; and trust more to your imagination than 
to your memory. 



Really, the metre of some of the modern poems I 
have read, bears about the same relation to metre prop- 
erly understood, that dumb bells do to music ; both are 
for exercise, and pretty severe too, I think. 



Nothing ever left a stain on that gentle creature's 
mind, which looked upon the degraded men and things 
around him like moonshine on a dunghill, which shines 
and takes no pollution. All things are shadows to him, 
except those which move his afl'ections. 

* As far as I can judge, the most complete and masterly thing 
ever done by Mr. Coleridge in prose, is the analysis and recon- 
cilement of the Platonic and Baconian methods of philosophy, 
contained in the third volume of the Friend, from p. 176 to 216. 
No edition of the Novum Organum should ever be published with- 
out a transcript of it. — Ed. 



OF S. T. COLERIDGE. 137 

September 23, 1830 

Logic. 

There are two kinds of logic : 1. Syllogistic. 2. 
Criterional. How any one can by any spinning make 
out more than ten or a dozen pages about the first, is 
inconceivable to me ; all those absurd forms of syllo- 
gisms are one half pure sophisms, and the other half 
mere forms of rhetoric. 



All syllogistic logic is — 1. /Seclusion ; 2. //jclusion ; 
3. Conclusion ; which answer to the understanding, 
the experience, and the reason. The first says, this 
ought to be ; the second adds, this is ; and the last 
pronounces, this must be so. The criterional logic, 
or logic of premises, is, of course, much the most im- 
portant ; and it has never yet been treated. 



* 



The object of rhetoric is persuasion, — of logic, con- 
viction, — of grammar, significancy. A fourth term is 
wanting, the rhematic, or logic of sentences. 



September 24, 1830. 

Varro — Socrates — Greek Philosophy — Plotinus — Ter- 
tullian. 

What a loss we have had in Varro's mythological 
and critical works ! It is said that the works of Epi- 
curus are probably among the Herculanean manu- 
scripts. I do not feel much interest about them, be- 
cause, by the consent of all antiquity, Lucretius has 
preserved a complete view of his system. But I re- 

* Mr. Coleridge's own treatise on Logic is unhappily left im- 
perfect. But the fragment, such as it is, wiU be presented to the 
world in the best possible form which the circumstances admit, 
by Mr. Joseph Henry Green, who, beyond any of Mr. C.'s friends, 
is intimately acquainted with his principles and ultimate aspirations 
jn philosophy generally, and in psychology in particular. — Ed. 
1 o* 



138 TABLE-TALK 

gret the loss of the works of the old Stoics, Zeno and 
others, exceedingly. 

Socrates, as such, was only a poetical character to 
Plato, who worked upon his own ground, The sev- 
eral disciples of Socrates caught some particular points 
from him, and made systems of philosophy upon them 
according to their own views. Socrates himself had 
no system. 



I hold all claims set up for Egypt having given birth 
to the Greek philosophy, to be groundless. It sprang 
up in Greece itself, and began with physics only. 
Then it took in the idea of a living cause, and made 
Pantheism out of the two. Socrates introduced ethics, 
and taught duties ; and then, finally, Plato asserted, or 
re-asserted, the idea of a God, the maker of the world. 
The measure of human philosophy was thus full, when 
Christianity came to add what before was wanting — 
assurance. After this again, the Neo-Platonists joined 
Theurgy with philosophy, which ultimately degener- 
ated into magic and mere mysticism. 



Plotinus was a man of wonderful ability, and some 
of the sublimest passages I ever read are in his works. 



I was amused the other day with reading in Tertul- 
lian, that spirits or demons dilate and contract them- 
selves, and wriggle about like worms — lumhricis similes. 



September 26, 1830. 

Scotch and English Lakes. 

The five finest things in Scotland are — 1. Edinburgh ; 
2. The antechamber of the Fall of Foyers ; 3. The 
view of Loch Lomond from Inch Tavannach, the high- 
est of the islands ; 4. The Trosachs ; 5. The view of 
the Hebrides from a point, the name of which I forget. 
But the intervals between the fine things in Scotland 



OF S. T. COLERIDGE. 139 

are very dreary ; — whereas, in Cumberland and West- 
moreland there is a cabinet of beauties, — each thing 
being beautiful in itself, and the very passage from 
one lake, mountain, or valley, to another, is itself a 
•oeautiful thing again. The Scotch lakes are so like 
one another, from their great size, that in a picture 
you are obliged to read their names ; but the English 
lakes, especially Derwent Water, or rather the whole 
vale of Keswick, is so reinemberable, that after having 
been once seen, no one ever requires to be told what 
it is when drawn. This vale is about as large a basin 
as Loch Lomond ; the latter is covered with water ; 
but in the former instance, we have two lakes with a 
charming river to connect them, and lovely villages at 
the foot of the mountain, and other habitations, which 
give an air of life and cheerfulness to the whole place. 



The land imagery of the north of Devon is most 
delightful. 



September 27, 1830. 

Love and Friendship Opposed — Marriage — Character^ 
lessncss of Women. 

once said, that he could make nothing of love, 

except that it was friendship accidentally combined with 
desiie. Whence I conclude that he was never in love. 
For what shall we say of the feeling which a man of 
sensibility has towards his wife with her baby at her 
breast ! How pure from sensual desire ! yet how dif- 
ferent from friendship ! 



Sympathy constitutes friendship ; but in love there 
is a sort of antipathy, or opposing passion. Each 
strives to be the other, and both together make up one 
whole. 



Luther has sketched the most beautiful picture of 



140 TABLE-TALK -J 

the nature, and ends, and duties of the wedded life I 
ever read. St. Paul says it is a great symbol, not 
mystery, as we translate it.* 



*' Most women have no character at all," said Pope,t 
and meant it for satire. Shakspeare, who knew man 
and woman much better, saw that it, in fact, was the 
perfection of woman to be characterless. Every one 
wishes a Desdemona or Ophelia for a wife, — creatures 
who, though they may net always understand you, do 
always feel you, and feel %Yith you. 



September 28, 1830. 

Mental Anarchy. 

Why need we talk of a fiery hell ? If the will, 
which is the law of our nature, were withdrawn from 
our memory, fancy, understanding, and reason, no 
other hell could equal, for a spiritual being, what we 
should then feel, from the anarchy of our powers. It 
would be conscious madness — a horrid thou,^ht ! 



October 5, 1830. 

Ear and Taste for Music different — English Liturgy 
— Belgian Revolution. 

In politics, what begins in fear usually ends in folly. 

An ear for music is a very different thing from a 
taste for music. I have no ear whatever ; I could not 

* Kai idovrai o\ Svo tl^ cdpKa filav. t6 iivarfiptov rofro {liya iarlv, 
iyu) 6i Xiyu) els Xpiarbv koX els rnv tKKXijalav. — Ephes., C. V. 31, 32. 

t " Nothing so true as what you once let fall — 
' Most women have no character at all,' — 
Matter too soft a lasting mark to bear, 
And best distinguish'd by black, brown, and fair." 

E'fist. to a Lady, v. 1. 



OF S. T. COLERIDGE. 141 

sing an air to save my life ; but I have the intensest 
delight in music, and can detect good from bad. Naldi, 
a good fellow, remarked to me once at a concert, that 
I did not seem much interested with a piece of Ros- 
sini's which had just been performed. I said, it 
sounded to me like nonsense verses. But I could 
scarcely contain myself when a thing of Beethoven's 
followed. 



I never distinctly felt the heavenly superiority of the 
prayers in the English liturgy, till. I had attended some 
kirks in the country parts of Scotland. 



I call these strings of school-boys or girls which 
we meet near London — walking advertisements. 

The Brussels riot — I cannot bring myself to dignify 

it with a higher name is a wretched parody on the 

last French revolution. Were I King William I would 
banish the Belgians, as Coriolanus banishes the Ro- 
mans in Shakspeare.* It is a wicked rebellion with- 
out one just cause. 



October 8, 1830. 

Galileo^ Newton^ Kepler^ Bacon. 

Galileo was a great genius, and so was Newton ; 
but it would take two or three Galileos and Newtons 
to make one Kepler. f It is in the order of Provi- 
dence, that the inventive, generative, constitutive mind 

* " You common cry of curs ! whose breath I hate 
As reek o' the rotten fens, whose loves I prize 
As the dead carcasses of unburied men 
That do corrupt my air, I banish you ; 
And here remain with your uncertainty .'" 

Act. iii., sc. 3. 
t Galileo Gahlei was born at Pisa, on the 15th of February, 
1564. John Kepler was born at Weil, in the dutchy of Wirtem- 
berg, on the 21st of December, 1571. — Ed, 



142 TABLE TALK 

—the Kepler — should come first ; and then that the 
patient and collective mind — the Newton — should fol- 
low, and elaborate the pregnant queries and illumining 
guesses of the former. The laws of the planetary- 
system are, in fact, due to Kepler. There is not a 
more glorious achievement of scientific genius upon 
record, than Kepler's guesses, prophecies, and ulti- 
mate apprehension of the law* of the mean distances 
of the planets as connected with the periods of their 
revolutions round the sun. Gravitation, too, he had 
fully conceived ; but, because it seemed inconsistent 
with some received observations on light, he gave it 
up, in allegiance, as he says, to Nature. Yet the 
idea vexed and haunted his mind ; " Vexat me et laces- 
sit,^'' are his words, I believe. 



We praise Newton's clearness and steadiness. He 
was clear and steady, no doubt, while working out, by 
the help of an admirable geometry, the idea brought 
forth by another. Newton had his ether, and could 
not rest in — he could not conceive — the idea of a law. 
He thought it a physical thing after all. As for his 
chronology, I believe, those who are most competent 
to judge, rely on it less and less every day. His lucu- 
brations on Daniel and the Revelations seem to me 
little less than mere raving. 



Personal experiment is necessary, in order to cor- 
rect our own observation of the experiments which 
Nature herself makes for us — I mean, the phenomena 
of the universe. But then observation is, in turn, 
wanted, to direct and substantiate the course of experi- 
ment. Experiments alone cannot advance knowledge, 
without observation ; they amuse for a time, and then 
pass oflf the scene and leave no trace behind them. 



Bacon, when like himself — for no man was ever 

* Namely, that the squares of their times vary as the cubes of 
their distances.— Ed. 



OF S. T. COLERIDGE. 143 

more inconsistent — says, " Prudens qucBstio — dimidium 
scicnticB estJ'^ 



October 20, 1830. 

The Reformation. 

At the Reformation, the first reformers were beset 
with an almost morbid anxiety not to be considered 
heretical in point of doctrine. They knew that the 
Romanists were on the watch to fasten the brand of 
heresy upon them whenever a fair pretext could be 
found ; and I have no doubt it was the excess of this 
fear which at once led to the burning of Servetus, and 
also to the thanks offered by all the Protestant 
churches, to Calvin and the Church of Geneva, for 
burning him. 



November 21, 1830. 

House of Commons. 

never makes a figure in quietude. He astounds 

the vulgar with a certain enormity of exertion ; he 
takes an acre of canvass, on which he scrawls every 
thing. He thinks aloud'; every thing in his mind, 
good, bad, or indifferent, out it comes ; he is like the 
Newgate gutter, flowing with garbage, dead doo^s, and 
mud. He is pre-eminently a man of many thoughts, 
with no ideas : hence he is always so lengthy, be- 
cause he must go through every thing to see any thing 

It is a melancholy thing to live when there is no 
vision in the land. Where are our statesmen to meet 
this emergency? I see no reformer who asks him- 
self the question. What is it that I propose to myself 
to effect in the result ? 



Is the House of Commons to be re-constructed on 
the principle of a representation of interests, or of a 



144 TABLE-TALK 

delegation of men ? If on the former, we may, per- 
haps, see our way ; if on the latter, you can never, in 
reason, stop short of universal suffrage ; and in that 
case, I am sure that women have as good a right to 
vote as men.* 

* In Mr. Coleridge's masterly analysis and confutation of the 
physiocratic system of the early French revolutionists, in the 
Friend, he has the following passage in the nature of a reductio 
ad absurdum. *' Rousseau, indeed, asserts that there is an 
inalienable sovereignty inherent in every human being possessed 
of reason; and from this the framers of the Constitution of 1791 
deduce, that the people itself is its own sole rightful legislator, 
and at most dare only recede so far from its right as to delegate 
to chosen deputies the power of representing and declaring the 
general will. But this is wholly without proof; for it has been 
already fully shown, that, according to the principle out of which 
this consequence is ?ttempted to be drawn, it is not the actual 
man, but the abstract reason alon?., that is the sovereign and 
rightful lawgiver. The confusion of two things so different is so 
gross an error, that the Constituent Assembly could scarcely pro- 
ceed a step in their declaration of rights, without some glaring 
inconsistency. Children are excluded from all political power ; 
are they not human beings in whom the faculty of reason resides 1 
Yes I but in them the faculty is not yet adequately developed. 
But are not gross ignorance, inveterate superstition, and the habit- 
ual tyranny of passion and sensuality, equally preventives of the 
development, equally impediments to the rightful exercise, of the 
reason, as childhood and early youth 1 Who would not rely on 
the judgment of a well-educated English lad, bred in a virtuous 
and enlightened family, in preference to that of a brutal Russian, 
who believes that he can scourge his wooden idol into good-humour, 
or attributes to himself the merit of perpetual prayer, when he has 
fastened the petitions which his priest has written for him on 
the wings of a windmill 1 Again : women are likewise exclu- 
ded ; a full half, and that assuredly the most innocent, the most 
amiable half, of the whole human race is excluded, and this too 
by a Constitution which boasts to have no other foundations but 
those of universal reason! Is reason, then, an affair of sexl 
No ! but women are commonly in a state of dependance, and are 
not likely to exercise their reason with freedom. Well ! and 
does not this ground of exclusion apply with equal or greater force 
to the poor, to the mlirm, to men in embarrassed circumstances, 
to all, in short, w^iose maintenance, be it scanty or be it ample, 
depends on the will of others ! How far are we to go 1 Where 
must we stop 1 What classes should we admit 1 Whom must 
we disfranchise 1 The objects concerning whom we are to de- 
termine these questions arc all human beings, and differenced 



OF S. T. COLERIDGE. 145 

March 20, 1831. 

Government — Earl Grey. 

Government is not founded on property, taken 
merely as such, in the abstract ; it is founded on une- 
qual property ; the inequality is an essential term in 
the position. The phrases — higher, middle, and lower 
classes, with reference to this point of representation 
— are delusive ; no such divisions as classes actually 
exist in society. There is an indissoluble blending 
and interfusion of persons from top to bottom ; and no 
man can trace a line of separation through them, ex- 
cept such a confessedly unmeaning and unjustifiable 
line of political empiricism as 10/. householders. I 
cannot discover a ray of principle in the government 
plan, — not a hint oT the effect of the change upon the 
balance of the estates of the realm, — not a remark on 
the nature of the constitution of England, and the char- 
acter of the property of so many millions of its inhab- 
itants. Half the wealth of this country is purely arti- 
ficial, — existing only in and on the credit given to it 
by the integrity and honesty of the nation. This 
property appears, in many instances, a heavy burden 
to the numerical majority of the people, and they be- 
lieve that it causes all their distress : and they are now 
to have the maintenance of this property committed to 
their good faith — the lamb to the wolves ! 



Necker, you remember, asked the people to come 
and help him against the aristocracy. The people 
came fast enough at his bidding; but, somehow or 
other, they would not go away again when they had 
done their work. I hope Lord Grey will not see him- 
self or his friends in the woful case of the conjurer, 

from each other by degrees only, these degrees too oftentimes 
changing. Yet the principle on which the whole system rests is, 
that reason is not susceptible of degree. Nothing, therefore, 
which subsists wholly in degrees, the changes of which do not 
obey any necessary law, can be objects of pure science, or deter- 
minable by mere reason." — Vol. i., p. 341. — Ed. 

Vol. I.— G 13 



146 TABLE-TALK 

who, with infinite zeal and pains, called up the devils 
to do something for him. They came at the word, 
thronging about him, grinning, and howling, and dan- 
cing, and whisking their long tails in diabolic glee ; 
but when they asked him what he wanted of them, 
the poor wretch, frightened out of his wits, could 
only stammer forth, — ^" I pray you, my friends, be 
gone down again !" At which the devils, with one 
voice, replied, — 

" Yes ! yes ! we'll go down ! we'll go down ! — 
But we'll take yon with us to sink or to drown !"* 



June 25, 1831. 

Government — Popular Representation. 

The three great ends which a statesman ought to 
propose to himself in the government of a nation are, 

* Mr. Coleridge must have been thinking of that " very pithy 
and profitable" ballad by the Laureate, wherein is shown how a 
young man " would read unlawful books, and how he was pun- 
ished :" — 

" The young man, he began to read 

He knew not what, but he would proceed, 

When there was heard a sound at the door. 

Which as he read on grew more and more. 
"And more and more the knocking grew. 

The young man knew not what to do ; 

But trembling in fear he sat within. 

Till the door was broke, and the devil came in. 
" ' What wouldst thou with me V the wicked one cried ; 

But not a word the young man replied ; 

Every hair on his head was standing upright, 

And his limbs like a palsy shook with affright. 
" * What wouldst thou with me ?' cried the author of ill ; 

But the wretched young man was silent still," &c. 
The catastrophe is very terrible ; and the moral, though addressed 
by the poet to young men only, is quite as applicable to old men, 
as the times show. 

" Henceforth let all young men take heed 

How in a conjurer's books they read !" 

Southey's Minor Poems, vol, iii., p. 92. — Ed. 



k 



1 



OF S. T. COLERIDGE. 147 

—1. Security to possessors ; 2. Facility to acquirers ; 
and, 3. Hope to all. 

A nation is the unity of a people. King and parlia- 
ment are the unity made visible. The king and the 
peers are as integral portions of this manifested unity 
as the commons.* 



In that imperfect state of society in which our sys- 
tem of representation began, the interests of the coun- 
try were pretty exactly commensurate with its muni- 
cipal divisions. The counties, the towns, and the sea- 
ports, accurately enough represented the only interests 
then existing; that is to say, — the landed, the shop- 
keeping or manufacturing, and the mercantile. But 
for a century past, at least, this division has become 
notoriously imperfect, some of the most vital interests 
of the empire being now totally unconnected with any 
English localities. Yet now, when the evil and the 
want are known, we are to abandon the accommoda- 
tions which the necessity of the case had worked out for 
itself, and begin again with a rigidly territorial plan of 
representation ! The miserable tendency of all is to 
destroy our nationality, which consists, in a principal 
degree, in our representative government, and to con- 
vert it into a degrading delegation of the populace. 
There is no unity for a people but in a representation 

* Mr. Coleridge was very fond of quoting George Withers's 
fine lines : — 

" Let not your king and parliament in one, 
Much less apart, mistake themselves for that 
Which is most worthy to be thought upon ; 
Nor think they are, essentially, The State. 
Let them not fancy that th' authority 
And privileges upon them bestown, 
Conferred are to set up a majesty, 
A power, or a glory, of their own ! 
But let them know, 'twas for a deeper life. 
Which they but represent — 
That there's on earth a yet auguster thing, 
Veil'd though it be, than parliament and king !" — Ed. j 

G2 



148 TABLE-TALK 

of national interests ; a delegation from the passions 
or wishes of the individuals themselves is a rope of 
sand. 

Undoubtedly it is a great evil that there should be 
such an evident discrepance between the law and the 
practice of the constitution in the matter of the repre- 
sentation. Such a direct, yet clandestine, contraven- 
tion of solemn resolutions and established laws is im-^ 
moral, and greatly injurious to the cause of legal loy- 
alty and general subordination in the minds of the 
people. But then a statesman should consider that these 
very contraventions of law in practice point out to him 
the places in the body politic which need a remodell- 
ing of the law. You acknowledge a certain necessity 
for indirect representation in the present day, and 
that such representation has been instinctively obtained 
by means contrary to law ; why then do you not ap- 
proximate the useless law to the useful practice, in- 
stead of abandoning both law and practice for a com- 
pletely new system of your own ? 



The malignant duplicity and unprincipled tergiver- 
sations of the specific Whig newspapers are to me de- 
testable. I prefer the open endeavours of those publica- 
tions which seek to destroy the church, and introduce 
a republic in effect : there is a sort of honesty in that 
which I approve, though I would with joy lay down my 
life to save my country from the consummation which 
is so evidently desired by that section of the periodical 
press. 



June 26, 1831. 

Napier — Bonaparte — Southey. 

I HAVE been exceedingly impressed with the perni- 
cious precedent of Napier's History of the Peninsular 
War. It is a specimen of the true French military 
school ; not a thought for the justice of the war, — not 



OF S. T. COLERIDGE. 149 

a consideration of the damnable and damning iniquity 
of the French invasion. All is looked at as a mere 
game of exquisite skill, and the praise is regularly 
awarded to the most successful player. How perfectly 
ridiculous is the prostration of Napier's mind, appa- 
rently a powerful one, before the name of Bonaparte ; 
I declare I know no book more likely to undermine the 
national sense of right and wrong in matters of foreign 
interference than this work of Napier's. 



If A. has a hundred means of doing a certain thing, 
and B. has only one or two, is it very wonderful, or 
does it argue very transcendent superiority, if A. sur- 
passes B. ? Bonaparte was the child of circumstances, 
which he neither originated nor controlled. He had no 
chance of preserving his power but by continual war- 
fare. No thought of a wise tranquillization of the shaken 
elements of France seems ever to have passed through 
his mind ; and I believe that at no part of his reign 
could he have survived one year's continued peace. 
He never had but one object to contend with — physi- 
cal force ; commonly the least difficult enemy a gen- 
eral, subject to courts-martial and courts of conscience, 
has to overcome. 

Southey's History* is on the right side, and starts from 
the right point ; but he is personally fond of the Span- 
iards, and in bringing forward their nationality in the 
prominent manner it deserves, he does not, in my judg- 
ment, state with sufficient clearness the truth, that 
the nationality of the Spaniards was not founded on any 
just ground of good government or wise laws, but was, 
in fact, very little more than a rooted antipathy to all 
strangers as such. In this sense every thing is na- 
tional in Spain. Even their so called Catholic reli- 
gion is exclusively national in a genuine Spaniard's 
mind ; he does not regard the religious professions of 

* Mr. Coleridge said that the conclusion of this great work was 
the finest specimen of historic eulogy he had ever read in Eng- 
lish ; — that it was more than a campaign to the duke's fame, — 

Editor. 

1 Qij 



150 TABLE-TALK 

the Frenchman or ItaUan at all in the same light with 
his own. 



July 7, 1831. 
Patronage of the Fine Arts — Old Women. 
The darkest despotisms on the Continent have done 
more for the growth and elevation of the fine arts than 
the English government. A great musical composer 
in Germany and Italy is a great man in society, and a 
real dignity and rank are universally conceded to him. 
So it is with a sculptor, or painter, or architect. With- 
out this sort of encouragement and patronage such arts 
as music and painting will never come into great em- 
inence. In this country there is no general reverence 
for the fine arts ; and the sordid spirit of a money- 
amassing philosophy would meet any proposition for 
the fostering of art, in a genial and extended sense, 
with the commercial maxim, — Laissez faire. Paga- 
nini, indeed, will make a fortune, because he can actu- 
ally sell the tones of his fiddle at so much a scrape ; 
but Mozart himself might have languished in a garret 
for any thing that would have been done for him here. 



There are three classes into which all the women 
past seventy that ever I knew were to be divided : — 
1. That dear old soul ; 2. That old woman ; 3. That 
old witch. 



July 24, 1831. 

Pictures.* 
Observe the remarkable difference between Claude 

* All the following remarks in this section were made at the 
exhibition of ancient masters at the British Gallery in Pall Mall. 
The recollection of those two hours has made the rooms of that 
Institution a melancholy place for me. Mr. Coleridge was in high 
spirits, and seemed to kindle in his mind at the contemplation of 
the splendid pictures before him. He did not examine them all 
by the catalogue, but anchored himself before some three or four 



OF S. T. COLERIDGE. 151 

and Teniers in their power of painting a vacant space. 
Claude makes his whole landscape a plenum : the air 
is quite as substantial as any other part of the scene. 
Hence there are no true distances, and every thing 
presses at once and equally upon the eye. There is 
something close and almost suffocating in the atmo- 
sphere of some of Claude's sunsets. Never did any 
one paint air, the thin air, the absolutely apparent va- 
cancy between object and object, so admirably as Te- 
niers. That picture of the Archers* exemplifies this 
excellence. See the distances between these ugly 
louts ! how perfectly true to the fact ! 



But oh ! what a wonderful picture is that Triumph 
of Silenus If It is the very revelry of hell. Every 
evil passion is there that could in any way be forced 
into juxtaposition with joyance. Mark the lust, and, 

great works, telling me that he saw the rest of the gallery poten- 
tially. I can yet distinctly recall him, half leaning on his old sim- 
ple stick, and his hat off in one hand, while with the fingers of 
the other he went on, as was his constant wont, figuring in the 
air a commentary of small diagrams, wherewith, as he fancied, he 
could translate to the eye those relations of form and space which 
his words might fail to convey with clearness to the ear. His ad- 
miration for Rubens showed itself in a sort of joy and brotherly 
fondness ; he looked as if he would shake hands with his pictures. 
What the company, which by degrees formed itself round this sil- 
ver-haired, I right-eyed, music-breathing old man, took him for, I 
cannot guess ; there was probably not one there who knew him to 
be that Ancient Mariner, who held people with his glittering eye, 
and constrained them, like three years' children, to hear his tale. 
In the midst of his speech, he turned to the right hand, where 
stood a very lovely young woman, whose attention he had invol- 
untarily arrested ; — to her, without apparently any consciousness 
of her being a stranger to him, he addressed many remarks, al- 
though I must acknowledge they were couched in a somewhat 
softer tone, as if he were soliciting her sympathy. He was, verily, 
a gentle-hearted man at all times ; but I never was in company 
with him in my life, when the entry of a woman, it mattered not 
who, did not provoke a dim gush of emotion, which passed like an 
infant's breath over the mirror of his intellect. — Ed. 

* " Figures shooting at a Target," belonging, I believe, to 
Lord Bandon. — Ed. 

t This belongs to Sir Robert Peel.— Ed. 



152 TABLE-TALK 

hard by, the hate. Every part is pregnant with libid- 
inous nature, without one spark of the grace of Heaven. 
The animal is triumphing — not over, but — in the ab- 
sence, in the non-existence, of the spiritual part of 
man. I could fancy that Rubens had seen in a vision — 

" All the souls that damned be 
Leap up at once in anarchy, 
Clap their hands and dance for glee !" 

That landscape* on the other side is only less mag- 
nificent than dear Sir George Beaumont's, now in the 
National Gallery. It has the same charm. Rubens 
does not take for his subjects grand or novel conforma- 
tions of objects ; he has, you see, no precipices, no 
forests, no frowning castles, nothing that a poet would 
take at all times, and a painter take in these times. 
No ; he gets some little ponds, old tumble-down cot- 
tages, that ruinous chateau, two or three peasants, a 
hay-rick, and other such humble images, which, looked 
at in and by themselves, convey no pleasure and excite 
no surprise ; but he, — and he Peter Paul Rubens alone 
— handles these every-day ingredients of all common 
landscapes as they are handled in nature ; he throws 
them into a vast and magnificent whole, consisting of 
heaven and earth and all things therein. He extracts 
the latent poetry out of these common objects — that 
poetry and harmony which every man of genius per- 
ceives in the face of nature, and which many men of no 
genius are taught to perceive and feel after examining 
such a picture as this. In other landscape painters 
the scene is confined, and, as it were, imprisoned ; in 
Rubens the landscape dies a natural death ; it fades 
away into the apparent infinity of space. 

So long as Rubens confines himself to space and 
outward figure — to the mere animal man with animal 
passions — he is, I may say, a god among painters. 
His satyrs, Silenuses, lions, tigers, and dogs, are almost 



* " Landscape with Setting Sun,'' — Lord Famborough's pic- 
re. — Ed. 



1 



OF S. T. COLERIDGE. 153 

godlike ; but the moment he attempts any thing involv- 
ing or presuming the spiritual, his gods and goddesses, 
his nymphs and heroes, become beasts, absolute, un- 
mitigated beasts. 

The Italian masters differ from the Dutch in this — 
that in their pictures ages are perfectly ideal. The 
infant that Raffael's Madona holds in her arms cannot 
be guessed of any particular age ; it is Humanity in 
infancy. The babe in a manger in a Dutch painting 
is a fac-simile of some real new-born bantling ; it is 
just like the little rabbits we fathers have all seen with 
some dismay at first burst. 



Carlo Dolce's representations of our Saviour are 
pretty, to be sure ; but the}^ are too smooth to please 
me. His Chrisis are always in sugar candy. 



That is a very odd and funny picture of the Con- 
noisseurs at Rome* by Reynolds. 



The more I see of modern pictures, the more I am 
convinced that the ancient art of painting is gone, and 
something substituted for it — very pleasing, but differ- 
ent, and different in kind, and not in degree only. Por- 
traits by the old masters — take for example the pock- 
fritten lady by Cuypf — are pictures of men and women : 
they fill, not merely occupy, a space ; they represent 
individuals, but individuals as types of a species- 
Modern portraits — a few by Jackson and Owen, per- 
haps, excepted — give you not the man, not the inward 
humanity, but merely the external mark, that in which 
Tom is different from Bill. There is something affect- 
ed and meretricious in the Snake in the Grass,]; and 
such pictures, by Reynolds. 

* " Portraits of distinguished Connoisseurs painted at Rome," 
belonging to Lord Burlington. — Ed. 

1 1 almost forget, but have some recollection that the allusion 
is to Mr. Heneage Finch's picture of a Lady with a Fan. — Ed. 

I Sir Robert Peel's.— Ed. 

G3 



154 TABLE-TALK 



July 25, 1831. 



Chillingworth — Superstition of Maltese, Sicilians^ 
and Italians. 

It is now twenty years since I read Chillingworth's 
book ;* but certainly it seemed to me that his main 
position, that the mere text of the Bible is the sole and 
exclusive ground of Christian faith and practice, is 
quite untenable against the Romanists. It entirely 
destroys the conditions of a church, of an authority 
residing in a religious community, and all that holy 
sense of brotherhood which is so sublime and consola- 
tory to a meditative Christian. Had I been a Papist, 
I should not have wished for a more vanquishable op- 
ponent in controversy. I certainly believe Chilling- 
worth to have been in some sense a Socinian. Lord 
Falkland, his friend, said so in substance. I do not 
deny his skill in dialectics ; he was more than a match 
for Knottt to be sure. 

* " The Religion of Protestants a safe "Way to Salvation ; or, 
an x\nswer to a Booke entitled ' Mercy and Truth ; or, Charity 
maintained by Catholics,' which pretends to prove the contrary." 

t Socinianism, or some inclination that way, is an old and 
clinging charge against Chillingworth. On the one hand, it is 
well known tliat he subscribed the articles of the Church of Eng- 
land in the usual form, on the 20th of July, 1638 ; and on the other, 
it is equally certain that within two years immediately previous, 
he wrote the letter to some unnamed correspondent, beginning, 
" Dear Harry," and printed in all the Lives of Chillingworth, in 
which letter he sums up his arguments upon the Arian doctrine in 
this passage : — " In a word, whosoever shall freely and impartially 
consider of this thing, and how on the other side the ancient 
fathers' weapons against the Arians are in a manner only places 
of Scripture (and these now for the most part discarded as impor- 
tunate and unconcluding), and how in the argument drawne from 
the authority of the ancient fathers they are almost always defend- 
ants, and scarse ever opponents, he shall not choose but confesse, 
or at least lie very inclinable to belceve, that the doctrine of Arrius 
is eyther a (ruth, or at least no damnable heresy.''^ The truth is, 
however, that the Socinianism of Chilhngworth, such as it may 
have been, had more reference to the doctrine of the redemptioa 
of man than of the being of God. 

Edward Knott's real name was Matthias Wilson. — E». 



OP S. T. COLERIDGE. 155 

I must be bold enough to say, that I do not think 
that even Hooker puts the idea of a church on the true 
foundation. 



The superstition of the peasantry and lower orders 
generally in Malta, Sicily, and Italy, exceeds common 
belief. It is unlike the superstition of Spain, which 
is a jealous fanaticism, having reference to their Ca- 
tholicism, and always glancing on heresy. The popu- 
lar superstition of Italy is the offspring of the climate, 
the old associations, the manners, and the very names 
of the places. It is pure paganism, undisturbed by 
any anxiety about orthodoxy, or animosity against 
heretics. Hence, it is much more good-natured and 
pleasing to a traveller's feelings, and certainly not a 
whit less like the true religion of our dear Lord, than 
the gloomy idolatry of the Spaniards. 



I well remember, when in Valetta in 1805, asking a 
boy who waited on me, what a certain procession, then 
passing, was, and his answering with great quick- 
ness, that it was Jesus Christ, who lives here [sia di 
casa qui), and when he comes out, it is in the shape 
of a wafer. But, " Eccellenza," said he, smiling and 
correcting himself, " non e Cristiano."* 

* The following anecdote related by Mr. Coleridge, in April, 
1811, was preserved and communicated to me by my brother, I. 
T. Coleridge:— 

" As I was descending from Mount ^tna with a very lively 
talkative guide, we passed through a village (I think called' Nico- 
lozzi, when the host happened to be passing through the street. 
Every one was prostrate ; my guide became so ; and, not to be 
singular, I went down also. After resuming our journey, I ob- 
served in my guide an unusual seriousness and long silence, which, 
after many hums and hahs, was interrupted by a low bow, and 
leave requested to ask a question. This was of course granted, 
and the ensuing dialogue took place. Guide. ' Signor, are you 
then a Christian? Coleridge. 'I hope so.' G. 'What! are 
all Englishmen Christians'?' C. 'I hope and trust they are.' 
G. 'What! are you not Turks 1 Are you not damned eternally 1' 
C. ' I trust not, through Christ.' G. ' What ! you believe in 
Christ then?' C. 'Certainly.' This answer produced another 



156 TABLE-TALK 

July, 30, 1831. 

Asgill — The French. 

AsGiLL was an extraordinary man, and his pamphlet* 
is invaluable. He undertook to prove that man is lit- 
erally immortal ; or, rather, that any given living man 
might probably never die. He complains of the cow- 
ardly practice of dying. He was expelled from two 
Houses of Commons for blasphemy and atheism, as 
was pretended — I really suspect because he was a 
stanch Hanoverian. I expected to find the ravings of 
an enthusiast, or the sullen snarlings of an infidel ; 
whereas I found the very soul %{ Swift — an intense, 
half self-deceived humorism. I scarcely remember 
elsewhere such uncommon skill in logic, such lawyer- 
like acuteness, and yet such a grasp of common sense. 
Each of his paragraphs is in itself a whole, and yet a 
link between the preceding and following ; so that the 

long silence. At length my guide again spoke, still doubting the 
grand point of my Christianity. G. ' I'm thinking, Signor, what 
is the difference between you and us, that you are to be certainly 
damned 1' C. ' Nothing very material; nothing that can prevent 
our both going to heaven, I hope. We believe in the Father, the 
Son, and the Holy Ghost.' G. (interrupting me,) ' Oh those 
damned priests ! what bars they are ! But (pausing) we can't do 
without them; we can't go to heaven without them. But tell me, 
Signor, what are the differences V C. ' Why, for instance, we 
do not worship the Virgin.' G. 'And why not, Signor? C. 
' Because, though holy and pure, we think her still a woman, and, 
therefore, do not pay her the honour due to God.' G. ' But do 
you not worship Jesus, who sits on the right hand of Godi' C. 

* We do.' G. ' Then why not worship the Virgin, who sits on 
' the left? C. ' I did not know she did. If you can show it me 

in the Scriptures, I shall readily agree to worship her.' — ' Oh,' 
said my man, with uncommon triumph, and cracking his fingers, 

* sicuro, Signor ! sicuro, Signor !' " — Ed. 

* "An argument proving that, according to the covenant of 
eternal life revealed in the Scriptures, man may be translated from 
hence without passing through death, although the human nature 
of Christ himself could not be thus translated, till he had passed 
through death." Asgill died in the year 1738, in the King's 
Bench prison, where he had been a prisoner for debt thirty years. 
— Editor. 



OP S. T. COLERIDGE. 157 

entire series forms one argument, and yet each is a 
diamond in itself. 



Was there ever such a miserable scene as that of 
the exhibition of the Austrian standards in the French 
House of Peers the other day ?* Every other nation 
but the French would see that it was an exhibition of 
their own falsehood and cowardice. A man swears 
that the property intrusted to him is burnt, and then, 
when he is no longer afraid, produces it, and boasts of 
the atmosphere of "Aonowr," through which the lie did 
not transpire. , 



Frenchmen are like grains of gunpowder, — each by 
itself smutty and contemptible, but mass them together 
and they are terrible indeed. 



August 1, 1831. 

As there is much beast and some devil in man, so 
is there some angel and some God in him. The beast 
and the devil may be conquered, but in this life never 
destroyed. 



I will defy any one to answer the arguments of a 
St. Simonist, except on the ground of Christianity — its 
precepts and its assurances. 

* When the allies were in Paris in 1815, all the Austrian 
standards were reclaimed. The answer was that they had been 
burnt by the soldiers at the Hotel des Invalides. This was a lie. 
The Marquis de Semonville confessed with pride that he, know-- 
ing of the fraud, had concealed these standards, taken from Mack at 
tJlm in 1805, in a vault under the Luxemburg palace. " An in- 
violable asylum," said the Marquis, in his speech to the peers, 
•' formed in the vault of this hall, has protected this treasure from 
every search. Vainly, during this long space of time, have the 
most authoritative researches endeavoured to penetrate the secret. 
It would have been culpable to reveal it, as long as we were liable 
to the demands of haughty foreigners. No one in this atmosphere 
of honour is capable of so great a weakness," &.c. — Ed. 

14 



158 TABLE-TALK 

August 6, 1831. 

The Good and the True — Romish Religion. 

There is the love of the good for the good's sake, 
and the love of the truth for the truth's sake. I have 
known many, especially women, love the good for the 
good's sake ; but very few, indeed, and scarcely one 
woman, love the truth for the truth's sake. Yet with- 
out the latter, the former may become, as it has a 
thousand times been, the source of persecution of the 
truth, — the pretext and motive of inquisitorial cruelty 
and party zealotry. To see clearly that the love of 
the good and the true is ultimately identical — is given 
only to those who love both sincerely and without any 
foreign ends. 



Look through the whole history of countries profes- 
sing the Romish religion, and you will uniformly find 
the leaven of this besetting and accursed principle of 
action — that the end will sanction any means. 



August 8, 1831. 

England and Holland. 

The conduct of this country to King William of 
Holland has been, in my judgment, base and unprin- 
cipled beyond any thing in our history since the times 
of Charles the Second. Certainly, Holland is one of 
the most important allies that England has ; and we 
are doing our utmost to subject it, and Portugal, to 
French influence, or even dominion ! Upon my word, 
the English people, at this moment, are like a man 
palsied in every part of his body but one, in which one 
part he is so morbidly sensitive that he cannot bear to 
have it so much as breathed upon, while you may 
pinch him with a hot forceps elsewhere without his 
taking any notice of it. 



OP fl. T. COLERIDGE. 159 

August 8, 1831. 

Iron — Galvanism — Heat. 

Iron is the most ductile of all hard metals, and the 
hardest of all ductile metals. With the exception of 
nickel, in which it is dimly seen, iron is the only metal 
in which the magnetic power is visible. Indeed, it is 
almost impossible to purify nickel of iron. 



Galvanism is the union of electricity and magnetism, 
and, by being continuous, it exhibits an image of life ; 
— I say, an image only : it is life in death. 



Heat is the mesothesis or indifference of light and 
matter. 



August 14, 1831. 

National Colonial Character and Naval Discipline. 

The character of most nations in their colonial de- 
pendances is in an inverse ratio of excellence to their 
character at home. The best people in the mother- 
country will generally be the worst in the colonies ; 
the worst at home will be the best abroad. Or, per- 
haps, I may state it less offensively thus : — The col- 
onists of a well-governed country will degenerate ; 
those of an ill-governed country will improve. I am 
now considering the natural tendency of such colonists 
if left to themselves ; of course, a direct act of the le- 
gislature of the mother-country will break in upon this. 
Where this tendency is exemplified, the cause is ob- 
vious. In countries well governed and happily con- 
ditioned, none, or very few, but those who are des- 
perate through vice or folly, or who are mere trading 
adventurers, will be willing to leave their homes and 
settle in another hemisphere ; and of those who do go, ;• 
the best and worthiest are always striving to acquire 
the means of leaving the colony, and of returning to 



# 



160 TABLE-TALK 

their native land. In ill-governed and ill-conditioned 
countries, on the contrary, the most respectable of the 
people are willing and anxious to emigrate for the 
chance of greater security and enlarged freedom; and, 
if they succeed in obtaining these blessings in almost 
any degree, they have little inducement, on the aver- 
age, to wish to abandon their second and better coun- 
try. Hence, in the former case, the colonists consider 
themselves as mere strangers, sojourners, birds of pas- 
sage, and shift to live from hand to mouth, with little 
regard to lasting improvement of the place of their 
temporary commerce ; while, in the latter case, men 
feel attached to a community to which they are in- 
dividually indebted for otherwise unattainable benefits, 
and for the most part learn to regard it as their abode, 
and to make themselves as happy and comfortable in it 
as possible. I believe that the internal condition and 
character of the English and French West India 
islands of the last century amply verified tliis distinc- 
tion ; the Dutch colonists most certainly did, and have 
always done. 



Analogous to this, though not founded on precisely 
the same principle, is the fact, that the severest naval 
discipline is always found in the ships of the freest na- 
tions, and the most lax discipline in the ships of the 
most oppressed. Hence, the naval discipline of the 
Americans is the sharpest ; then that of the English ;* 

* This expression needs explanation. It looks as if Mr. Cole- 
ridge rated the degree of Uberty enjoyed by the English, after thht 
of the citizens of the United States ; but he meant no such thing. 
His meaning was, that the form of government of the latter was 
more democratic, and formally assigned more power to each in- 
dividual. The Americans, as a nation, had no better friend in 
England than Coleridge ; he contemplated their growth with in- 
terest, and prophesied highly of their destiny, whether under their 
present or other governments. But he well knew their besetting 
faults and their peculiar difficulties, and was most deliberately of 
opinion that the English had, for 130 years last past, possessed a 
measure of individual freedom and social dignity which had never 
been equalled, much less surpassed, in any other country, ancient 



OF S. T. COLERIDGE. 161 

then that of the French (I speak as it used to be) ; and 
on board a Spanish ship, there is no discipline at all. 



August 15, 1831. 

England — Holland and Belgivm. 

I CANNOT contain my indignation at the conduct of 
our government towards Holland. They have un- 
doubtedly forgotten the true and well-recognised policy 
of this country in regard to Portugal in permitting the 
war-faction in France to take possessionof the Tagus, 
and to bully the Portuguese upon so flimsy — indeed, 

or modern. There is a passage in Mr. Coleridge's latest publica- 
tion {Church and State), which clearly expresses his opinion upon 
this subject : — " It has been frequently and truly observed, that in 
England, where the ground-plan, the skeleton, as it were, of the 
government is a monarchy, at once buttressed and limited by the 
aristocracy (the assertions of its popular character finding a better 
support in the harangues and theories of popular men, than in state 
documents, and the records of clear history), a far greater degree 
of liberty is and long has been enjoyed, than ever existed in the 
ostensibly freest, that is, most democratic, commonwealths of an- 
cient or modern times ; greater, indeed, and with a more decisive 
predominance of the spirit of freedom, than the wisest and most 
philanthropic statesmen of antiquity, or than the great common- 
wealth's-men, — the stars of that narrow interspace of blue sky be- 
tween the black clouds of the first and second Charles's reigns — 
believed compatible, the one with the safety of the state, the other 
with the interests of morality. Yes ! for little less than a century 
and a half. Englishmen have, collectively and individually, lived 
and acted with fewer restraints on their free-agency, than the 
citizens of any known republic, past or present." — (P. 120.) 
Upon which he subjoins the following note : — " It will be thought, 
perhaps, that the United States of North America should have 
been excepted. But the identity of stock, language, customs, 
manners, and laws, scarcely allow us to consider this an exception, 
even though it were quite certain both that it is and that it will con 
tinue such. It was at all events a remark worth remembering, 
which I once heard from a traveller (a prejudiced one, I must ad- 
mit), that where every man may take liberties, there is httle lib- 
erty for any man ; or, that where every man takes liberties, no 
man can enjoy any." — (P. 121.) See also a passage to the like 
effect in the Friend, vol. i., p. 129.--Ed. 
U* 



162 TABLE-TALK 

false — a pretext ;* yet, in this instance, something may 
be said for them. Miguel is such a wretch, that I ac- 
knowledge a sort of morality in leaving him to be 
cuffed and insulted ; though, of course, this is a poor 
answer to a statesman who alleges the interest and 
policy of the country. But, as to the Dutch and King 
William : the first, as a nation, the most ancient ally, 
the alter idem of England, the best deserving of the 
cause of freedom, and religion, and morality, of any 
people in Europe ; and the second, the very best sov- 
ereign now in Christendom, with, perhaps, the single 
exception of the excellent King of Sweden ;t was 
ever any thing so mean and cowardly as the behaviour 
of England ! The Five Powers have, throughout this 
conference, been actuated exclusively by a selfish de- 
sire to preserve peace — I should rather say, to smother 
war — at the expense of a most valuable but inferior 
power. They have over and over again acknowledged 
the justice of the Dutch claims, and the absurdity of 
the I3elgian pretences ; but as the Belgians were also 
as impudent as they were iniquitous — as they would 
not yield their point, w^hy, then — that peace may be 
prese«-ved — the Dutch must yield theirs ! A foreign 
prince comes into Belgium, pending these negotiations, 
and takes an unqualified oath to maintain the Belgian 
demands : what could King William or the Dutch do, 
if they ever thereafter meant to call themselves inde- 
pendent, but resist and resent this outrage to the utter- 
most ? It was a crisis in which every consideration 
of state became inferior to the strong sense and duty 
of national honour. When, indeed, the French appear 
in the field, King William retires. " I now see," he 

* Meaning, principally, the whipping, so richly deserved, in- 
flicted on a Frenchman called Bonhomme, for committing a dis- 
gusting breach of common decency in the cathedral of Coimbra, 
during divine service in Passion- Week. — Ed. 

t " Every thing that I have heard or read of this sovereign has 
contributed to the impression on my mind, that he is a good and a 
wise man, and worthy to be the king of a virtuous people, the 
purest specimen of the Gothic race." — Church and State, p. 126, 
n. — Ed. 



OP S. T. COLERIDGE. 163 

may say, *' that the powers of Europe are determined 
to abet the Belgians. The justice of such a proceed- 
ing I leave to their conscience and the decision of 
history. It is now no longer a question whether I am 
tamely to submit to rebels and a usurper ; it is no 
longer a quarrel between Holland and Belgium : it is 
an alliance of all Europe against Holland — in which 
case I yield. I have no desire to sacrifice my people." 



When Leopold said that he was called to " reign over 
four millions of noble Belgians," I thought the phrase 
would have been more germane to the matter, if he had 
said that he was called to " rein in four million restiff 



August 20, 1831. 

Greatest Happiness Principle — Hohbism. 

0. P. Q., in the Morning Chronicle, is a clever fel- 
low. He is for the greatest possible happiness for 
the greatest possible number, and for the longest pos- 
sible time ! So am I ; so are you, and every one of 
us, I will venture to say, round the tea-table. First, 
however, what does O. P. Q. mean by the word hap- 
piness ? and, secondly, how does he propose to make 
other persons agree in his definition of the term ? 
Don't you see the ridiculous absurdity of setting up 
that as a principle or motive of action, which is, in 
fact, a necessary and essential instinct of our very na- 
ture — an inborn and inextinguishable desire? How 
can creatures susceptible of pleasure and pain do other- 
wise than desire happiness ? But what happiness ? 
That is the question. The American savage, in scalp- 
ing his fallen enemy, pursues his happiness naturally 
and adequately. A Chickasaw or Pawnee Bentham, 
or 0. P. Q., would necessarily hope for the most fre- 
quent opportunities possible of scalping the greatest 
possible number of savages, for the longest possible 



164 TABLE-TALK 

time. There is no escaping this absurdity, unless you i 
come back to a standard of reason and duty, impera- 
tive upon our merely pleasurable sensations. Oh ! 
but, says O. P. Q., 1 am for the happiness of others ! 
Of others ! Are you, indeed? Well, I happen to be 
one of those others; and, so far as I can judge from 
what you show me of your habits and views, I would 
rather be excused from your banquet of happiness. 
Your mode of happiness would make me miserable. 
To go about doing as much good as possible to as many ' 
men as possible, is, indeed, an excellent object for a . 
man to propose to himself; but then, in order that you 
may not sacrifice the real good and happiness of others 
to your particular views, which may be quite different 
from your neighbours, you must do that good to others, 
which the reason, common to all, pronounces to be 
good for all. In this sense your fine maxim is so very 
true as to be a mere truism. 



So you object, with old Hobbes, that I do good ac- 
tions for the pleasure of a good conscience ; and so, 
after all, I am only a refined sensualist ! Heaven 
bless you, and mend your logic ! Don't you see that, 
if conscience, which is in its nature a consequence, 
were thus anticipated, and made an antecedent — a 
party instead of a judge — it would dishonour your 
draught upon it — it would not pay en demand ? Don't 
you see that, in truth, the very fact of acting with this 
motive properly and logically destroys all claim upon 
conscience to give you any pleasure at all ? 



August 22, 1831. 

The Two Modes of Political Action, 

There are many able and patriotic men in the House 
of Commons — Sir Robert Inglis, Sir Robert Peel, and 
some others. But I grieve that they never have the 
courage or the wisdom — I know not in which the fail- 
ure is — to take their stand upon duty, and to appeal 



OF S. T. COLERIDGE. 165 

to all men as men — to the Good and the True, which 
exist for all, and of which all have an apprehension. 
They always set to work — especially, his great emi- 
nence considered, Sir Robert Peel — by addressing 
themselves to individual interests ; the measure will 
be injurious to the linen-drapers, or to the bricklayers ; 
or this clause will bear hard on bobbinet or poplins, 
and so forth. Whereas their adversaries, the dema- 
gogues, always work on the opposite principle : they 
always appeal to men as men ; and, as you know, the 
most terrible convulsions in society have been wrought 
by such phrases as, Rights of Man, Sovereignty of the 
People, &LC., which no one understands, which apply 
to no one in particular, but to all in general.* The 
devil works precisely in the same way. He is a very 
clever fellow ; I have no acquaintance with him, but I 
respect his evident talents. Consistent truth and good- 
ness will assuredly in the end overcome every thing ; 
but inconsistent good can never be a match for con- 
sistent evil. Alas ! I look in vain for some wise and 
vigorous man to sound the word Duty in the ears of 
this generation. 

* '< It is with nations as with individuals. In tranquil moods 
and peaceable times we are quite practical : facts only, and cool 
common sense, are then in fashion. But let the winds of passion 
swell, and straightway men begin to generalize, to connect by 
remotest analogies, to express the most universal positions of rea- 
son in the most glowing figures of fancy ; in short, to feel par- 
ticular truths and mere facts as poor, cold, narrow, and incom- 
mensurate with their feelings." — Statesman's Manual, p. 18. 

" It seems a paradox only to the unthinking, and it is a fact 
that none but the unread in history will deny, that, in periods of 
popular tumult and innovation, the more abstract a notion is, the 
more readily has it been found to combine, the closer has appeared 
its affinity with the feelings of a people, and with all their imme- 
diate impulses to action. At the commencement of the French 
Revolution, in the remotest villages every tongue was employed 
in echoing and enforcing the almost geometrical abstractions of 
the physiocratic politicians and economists. The public roads 
were crowded with armed enthusiasts, disputing on the inaliena- 
ble sovereignty of the people, the imprescriptible laws of the pure 
reason, and the universal constitution, which, as rising out of the 
nature and rights of man as man, all nations alike were under the 
obligation of adopting." — Statesman'' s Manual. 



166 TABLE-TALK 

August 24, 1831. 

Truths and Maxims. 

The English public is not yet ripe to comprehend 
the essential difference between the reason and the 
understanding — between a principle and a maxim — an 
eternal truth and a mere conclusion generalized from 
a great number of facts. A man, having seen a million 
moss-roses all red, concludes from his own experience 
and that of others, that all moss-roses are red. That 
is a maxim with him — the greatest amount of his knowl- 
edge upon the subject. But it is only true until some 
gardener has produced a white moss-rose ; after which 
the maxim is good for nothing. Again, suppose Adam 
watching the sun sinking under the western horizon 
for the first time ; he is seized with gloom and terror, 
relieved by scarce a ray of hope that he shall ever see 
the glorious light again. The next evening, when it 
declines, his hopes are stronger, but still mixed with 
fear ; and even at the end of a thousand years, all that 
a man can feel is, a hope and an expectation so strong 
as to preclude anxiety. Now, compare this, in its 
highest degree, with the assurance which you have that 
the two sides of any triangle are together greater than 
the third. This, demonstrated of one triangle, is seen 
to be eternally true of all imaginable triangles. This 
is a truth perceived at once by the intuitive reason, 
independently of experience. It is, and must ever be 
so, multiply and vary the shapes and sizes of triangles 
as you may. 



It used to be said that four and five make nine. 
Locke says that four and five are nine. Now, I say, 
that four and five are not nine, but that they will make 
nine. When I see four objects which will form a 
square, and five which will form a pentagon, I see that 
they are two different things ; when combined, they 
will form a third different figure, which we call nine. 
When separate, they are ?iot it, but will make it. 



OF S. T. COLERIDGE. 167 

September 11, 1831. 
Drayton and Daniel. 

Drayton is a sweet poet, and Selden's notes to the 
early part of the Polyolbion are well worth your perusal. 
Daniel is a superior man ; his diction is pre-eminently 
pure ; — of that quality which I believe has always ex- 
isted somewhere in society. It is just such English, 
without any alteration, as Wordsworth or Sir George 
Beaumont might have spoken or written in the present 
day. 

Yet there are instances of sublimity in Drayton. 
When deploring the cutting down of some of our old 
forests, he says, in language which reminds the reader 
of Lear, written subsequently, and also of several pas- 
sages in Mr. Wordsworth's poems ; — 

" Our trees so hack'd above the ground, 

That where their lofty tops the neighbouring countries crown'd, 
Their trunks (like aged folks) now bare and naked stand, 
As for revenge to Heaven each held a withered hand.''''* 

That is very fine. 

* Polyol., VII. 

" He (Drayton) was a poet by nature, and carefully improved 
his talent ; one who sedulously laboured to deserve the approba- 
tion of such as were capable of appreciating, and cared nothing for 
the censures which others might pass upon him. * Like me that 
list,' he says, 



' My honest rhymes 



Nor care for critics, nor regard the times.' 

And though he is not a poet virum volitare per ora, nor one of 
those whose better fortune it is to live in the hearts of their de- 
voted admirers, — yet what he deemed his greatest work will be 
preserved by its subject. Some of his minor poems have merit 
enough in their execution to ensure their preservation ; and no 
one who studies poetry as an art, will think his time mispent in 
perusing the whole, if he have any real love for the art he is pur- 
suing. The youth who enters upon that pursuit without a feeling 
of respect and gratitude for those elder poets, who, by their 
labours, have prepared the way for him, is not likely to produce 



168 TABLE-TALK OF S. T. COLERIDGE. 

any thing himself that will be held in remembrance by poster 
ity."— TAe Doctor, &c., c. 36, P. I. 

I heartily trust that the author or authors, as the case may be, 
of this singularly thoughtful and diverting book will in due time 
continue it. Let some people say what they please, there has not 
been the fellow of it published for many a long day. — Ed. 



END OF VOL. I. 



I 



SPECIMENS 



TABLE TALK 



OF THE LATE 



SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. 

4t 



IN TWO VOLUMES. 

VOL. II. 



NEW-YORKr 

PUBLISHED BY^ HARPER & BROTHERS, 

NO. 82 CLIFF-STRKET, 

AND SOLD BY THE PRINCIPAL BOOKSKLLKRvS THROUGHOUT THE 

UNITED STATES. 



18 35. 



TABLE TALK. 



September 12, 1831. 

Mr, Coleridge's System of Philosophy. 

My system, if I may venture to give it so fine a 
name, is the only attempt I know ever made to reduce 
all knowledges into harmony. It opposes no other 
system, but shows what was true in each ; and how that 
which was true in the particular, in each of them be- 
came error, because it was only half the truth. I have 
endeavoured to unite the insulated fragments of truth, 
and therewith to frame a perfect mirror. I show to each 
system that I fully understand and rightfully appreci- 
ate what that system means ; but then I lift up that 
system to a higher point of view, from which I enable 
it to see its former position, where it was, indeed, but 
under another light and with different relations ; — so 
that the fragment of truth is not only acknowledged, 
but explained. Thus the old astronomers discovered 
and maintained much that was true ;, but, because they 
were placed on a false ground, and looked from a 
wrong point of view, they never did, they never could, 
discover the truth — that is, the whole truth. As soon 
as they left the earth, their false centre, and took their 
stand in the sun, immediately they saw the whole sys- 
tem in its true light, and their former station remain- 
ing, but remaining as a part of the prospect. I wish, 
in short, to connect by a moral copula natural his- 
tory with political history; or, in other words, to 
make history scientific, and science historical — to take 



4 TABLE TALK. 

from history its accidentality, and from science its 
fatalism. 

I never from a boy could under any circumstances 
feel the slightest dread of death as such. In all my 
illness I have ever had the most intense desire to be 
released from this life, unchecked by any but one wish, 
namely, to be able to finish my work on Philosophy. 
Not that I have any author's vanity on the subject: 
God knows that I should be absolutely glad, if I could 
hear that the thing had already been done before me. 



Illness never in the smallest degree affects my in- 
tellectual powers. I can think with all my ordinary 
vigour in the midst of pain ; but I am beset with the 
most wretched and unmanning reluctance and shrink- 
ing from action. I could not upon such occasions take 
the pen in hand to write down my thoughts for all the 
wide world. 



October 26, 1831, 

Keenness and Subtlety. 

Few men of genius are keen ; but almost every man 
of genius is subtle. If you ask me the difference be- 
tween keenness and subtlety, I answer that it is the 
difference between a point and an edge. To split a 
hair is no proof of subtlety ; for sublety acts in dis- 
tinguishing differences — in showing that two things 
apparently one are in fact two ; whereas, to split a hair 
is to cause division, and not to ascertain difference. 



October 27, 1831. 

Duties and Needs of an Advocate. 

There is undoubtedly a limit to the exertions of an 
advocate for his client. He has a right, it is his 
bounden duty, to do every thing which his client might 



OF S. T. COLERIDGE. 5 

honestly do, and to do it with all the effect which any 
exercise of skill, talent, or knowledge of his own may 
be able to produce. But the advocate has no right, 
nor is it his duty, to do that for his client which his 
client in foro conscientm has no right to do for him- 
self; as, for a gross example, to put in evidence a 
forged deed or will, knowing it to be so forged. As to 
mere confounding witnesses by skilful cross-examina- 
tion, I own I am not disposed to be very strict. The 
whole thing is perfectly well understood on all hands, 
and it is little more in general than a sort of cudgel- 
playing between the counsel and the witness, in which, 
I speak with submission to you, I think I have seen 
the witness have the best of it as often as his assail- 
ant. It is of the utmost importance in the administra- 
tion of justice that knowledge and intellectual power 
should be as far as possible equalized between the 
crown and the prisoner, or plaintiff and defendant. 
Hence especially arises the necessity for an order of 
advocates, — men whose duty it ought to be to know 
what the law allows and disallows; but whose interests 
should be wholly indifferent as to the persons or char- 
acters of their clients. If a certain latitude in ex- 
amining witnesses is, as experience seems to have 
shown, a necessary mean towards the evisceration of 
the truth of matters of fact, I have no doubt, as a 
moralist, in saying, that such latitude within the bounds 
now existing is justifiable. We must be content with 
a certain quantum in this life, especially in matters of 
public cognizance ; the necessities of society demand 
it ; we must not be righteous overmuch, or wise over- 
much ; and, as an old father says, in what vein may 
there not be a plethora when the Scripture tells us that 
there may under circumstances be too much of virtue 
and of wisdom ? 

Still I think that, upon the whole, the advocate is 
placed in a position unfavourable to his moral being, 
and, indeed, to his intellect also, in its higher powers. 
Therefore I would recommend an advocate to devote a 
part of his leisure time to some study of the meta- 
A2 



6 TABLE TALK 

physics of the mind, or metaphysics of theology 
something, I mean, which shall call forth all his pow- 
ers, and centre his wishes in the investigation of truth 
alone, without reference to a side to be supported. 
No studies give such a power of distinguishing as 
metaphysical, and in their natural and unperverted 
tendency they are ennobling and exalting. Some such 
studies are wanted to counteract the operation of legal 
studies and practice, which sharpen, indeed, but, like a 
grinding-stone, narrow while tiiey sharpen. 



November 19, 1831. 
Abolition of the French hereditary Peerage. 

I CANNOT say what the French Peers will do ; but I 
can tell you what they ought to do. " So far," tliey 
might say, " as our feelings and interests as individuals 
are concerned in this matter — if it really be the prevail- 
ing wish of our fellow-countrymen to destroy the hered- 
itary peerage — we shall, without regret, retire into the 
ranks of private citizens : but we are bound by the 
provisions of the existing constitution to consider our- 
selves collectively as essential to the well-being of 
France ; we have been placed here to defend what 
France, a short time ago at least, thought a vital part 
of its government ; and if we did not defend it, what 
answer could we make hereafter to France itself, if 
she should come to see, what we think to be an error, 
in the light in which we view it ? We should be 
justly branded as traitors and cowards, who had de- 
serted the post which we were especially appointed to 
maintain. As a House of Peers, therefore, — as one 
substantive branch of the legislature, — we can never, 
in honour or in conscience, consent to a measure of 
the impolicy and dangerous consequences of which 
we are convinced. 

^'If, therefore, this measure is demanded by the 



OF S. T. COLERIDGE. 7 

country, let the king and the deputies form themselves 
into a constituent assembly ; and then, assuming to act 
in the name of the total nation, let them decree the 
abolition. In that case, we yield to a just, perhaps, 
but revolutionary act, in which we do not participate, 
and against which we are upon the supposition quite 
powerless. If the deputies, however, consider them- 
selves so completely in the character of delegates as 
to be at present absolutely pledged to vote without 
freedom of deliberation, let a concise but perspicuous 
summary of the ablest arguments that can be adduced 
on either side be drawn up, and printed, and circulated 
throughout the country, and then, after two months, 
let the deputies demand fresh instructions upon this 
point. One thing, as men of honour, we declare be- 
forehand — that, come what will, none of us who are 
now peers will ever accept a peerage created de novo 
for life." 



November 20, 1831. 

Conduct of Ministers on the Reform Bill. 

The present ministers have, in my judgment, been 
guilty of two things pre-eminently wicked, scnsu po- 
litico, in their conduct upon this Reform Bill. First, 
they have endeavoured to carry a fundamental change 
in the material and mode of action of the government 
of the country by so exciting the passions, and playing 
upon the necessary ignorance of the numerical majority 
of the nation, that all freedom and utility of discussion 
by competent heads, in the proper place, should be 
precluded. In doing this they have used, or sanc- 
tioned the use of, arguments which may be applied 
with equal or even greater force to the carrying of any 
measure whatever, no matter how atrocious in its char- 
acter or destructive in its consequences. They have 
appealed directly to the argument of the greater num- 



8 TABLE TALK 

ber of voices, no matter whether the utterers were 
drunk or sobfer, competent or not competent ; and they 
have done the utmost in their power to rase out the 
sacred principle in politics of a representation of in- 
terests, and to introduce the mad and barbarizing 
scheme of a delegation of individuals. And they 
have done all this without one word of thankfulness to 
God for the manifold blessings of which the constitu- 
tion as settled at the Revolution, imperfect as it may 
be, has been the source or vehicle or condition to this 
great nation, — without one honest statement of the 
manner in which the anomalies in the practice grew 
up, or any manly declaration of the inevitable necessi- 
ties of government which those anomalies have met. 
With no humility, nor fear, nor reverence, like Ham 
the accursed, they have beckoned, with grinning faces, 
to a vulgar mob, to come and insult over the nakedness 
of a parent ; when it had become them, if one spark 
of filial patriotism had burnt within their breasts, to 
have marched with silent steps and averted faces to 
lay their robes upon his destitution ! 

Secondly, they have made the king the prime 
mover in all this political wickedness : they have 
made the king tell his people that they were deprived 
of their rights, and, by direct and necessary implica- 
tion, that they and their ancestors for a century past 
had been slaves : they have made the king vilify the 
memory of his own brother and father. Rights ! There 
are no rights whatever without corresponding duties. 
Look at the history of the growth of our constitution, 
and you will see that our ancestors never upon any 
occasion stated, as a ground for claiming any of their 
privileges, an abstract right inherent in themselves ; 
you will nowhere in our parliamentary records find the 
miserable sophism of the Rights of Man. No ! They 
were too wise for that. They took good care to refer 
their claims to custom and prescription, and boldly — 
sometimes very impudently — asserted them upon tra- 
ditionary and constitutional grounds. The Bill is bad 



I 



OF S. T. COLERIDGE. 9 

,enough, God knows ; but the arguments of its advo- 
cates, and the manner of their advocacy, are a thou- 
sand times worse than the bill itself ; and you will live 
to think so. 



December 3, 1831. 

Religion. 

A RELIGION, that is, a true religion^ must consist of 
ideas and facts both ; not of ideas alone without facts, 
for then it would be mere philosophy; nor of facts 
alone without ideas of which those facts are the sym- 
bols, or out of which they arise, or upon which they 
are grounded, for then it would be mere history. 



December 17, 1831. 

Union with Ireland — Irish Church. 

I AM quite sure that no dangers are to be feared by 
England from the disannexing and independence of 
Ireland at all comparable with the evils which have 
been, and will yet be, caused to England by the union. 
We have never received one particle of advantage 
from our association with Ireland, while we have in 
many most vital particulars violated the principles of 
the British constitution, solely for the purpose of con- 
ciliating the Irish agitators, and endeavouring — a vain 
endeavour — to find room for them under the same go- 
vernment. Mr. Pitt has received great credit for 
effecting the union ; but I believe it will sooner or 
later be discovered that the manner in which, and the 
terms upon which, he effected it, made it the most 
fatal blow that ever was levelled against the peace and 
prosperity of England. From it came the Catholic 
Bill. From the Catholic Bill has come this Reform 
Bill ! And what next ? 



10 TABLE TALK 

The case of the Irish Church is certainly anomalous, 
and full of practical difficulties. On the one hand, it 
is the only church which the constitution can admit ; 
on the other, such are the circumstances, it is a church 
that cannot act as a church towards five-sixths of the 
persons nominally and legally within its care. 



December 18, 1831. 
A State — Persons and Things — History. 

The difference between an inorganic and an organic 
body lies in this : — In the first — a sheaf of corn — the 
whole is nothing more than a collection of the indivi- 
dual parts or phenomena. In the second — a man — 
the whole is the eflfect of, or results from, the parts ; it 
— the whole — is every thing, and the parts are nothing. 

A state is an idea intermediate between the two — 
the whole being a result from, and not a mere total of, 
the parts ; and yet not so merging the constituent parts 
in the result but that the individual exists integrally 
within it. Extremes, especially in politics, meet. In 
Athens, each individual Athenian was of no value, but 
taken altogether, as Demus, they were every thing in 
such a sense that no individual citizen was any thing. 
In Turkey there is the sign of unity put for unity, 
/rhe sultan seems himself the state ; but it is an illu- 
sion : there is in fact in Turkey no state at all : the 
whole consists of nothing but a vast collection of neigh- 
bourhoods. 

When the government and the aristocracy of this 
country had subordinated ^er^ow.? to things, and treated 
the one like the other, — the poor, with some reason, 
and almost in self-defence, learned to set up rights 
above duties. The code of a Christian society is, 
Debeo, et tu debes — of heathens or barbarians, Teneo 
teneto et tu, si potes.* 

* " And this, again, is evolved out of the yet higher idea of 
person in contradistinction from thing, all social law and justict 



OF S. T. COLERIDGE. 11 

If men could learn from history, what lessons it 
might teach us ! But passion and party blind our eyes, 
and the light which experience gives is a lantern on 
the stern, which shines only on the waves behind us I 



December 27, 1831. 
Beauty— Genius. 
The old definition of beauty in the Roman school 
of painting was^ il piu nelV uno — multitude in unity ; 
and there is no doubt that such is the principle of 
beauty. And as one of the most characteristic and 
infallible criteria of the different ranks of men's intel- 
lects, observe the instinctive habit which all superior 
minds have of endeavouring to bring, and of never resting 
till they have brought into unity the scattered facts 
which occur in conversation, or in the statements of 
men of business. To attempt to argue any great 
question upon facts only is absurd ; you cannot state 
any fact before a mixed audience, which an opponent 
as clever as yourself cannot with ease twist towards 
another bearing, or at least meet by a contrary fact, as 
it is called. I wonder why facts were ever called 

being grounded on the principle that a person can never, but by 
his own fault, become a thing, or, without grievous wrong, be 
treated as such ; and the distinction consisting in this, that a 
thing maybe used altogether, and merely as the means to an end ; 
but the person must always be included in the end ; his interest 
must always form a part of the object, — a mean to which he, by 
consent, that is, by his own act, makes himself. We plant a 
tree, and we fell it ; we breed tlie sheep, and we shear, or we 
kill it, — in both cases wholly as means to our ends : for trees and 
animals are things. The woodcutter and the hind are likewise 
employed as means ; but on agreement, and that too an agree- 
ment of reciprocal advantage, which includes them as well as 
their employer in the end ; for they aro persons. And the gov- 
ernment under which the contrary takes place is not worthy to be 
Called a state, if, as in the kingdom of Dahomey, it be unpro- 
gressive ; or only by anticipation, where, as in Russia, it is in 
advance to a better and more manworthy order of things." — 
Church and State, p. 10. 



12 TABLE TALK 

Stubborn things : I am sure they have been found 
pliable enough lately in the House of Commons arid 
elsewhere. Facts, you know, are not truths; they 
are not conclusions ; they are not even premises, but 
in the nature and parts of premises. The truth de- 
pends on, and is only arrived at by, a legitimate deduc- 
tion from all the facts which are truly material. 



December 28, 1831. 

Church — State — Dissenters. 

Even to a church, — the only pure democracy, be- 
cause in it persons are alone considered, and one per- 
son a priori is equal to another person, — even to a 
church discipline is an essential condition. But a 
state regards classes, and classes as they represent 
classified property ; and to introduce a system of rep- 
resentation which must inevitably render all discipline 
impossible, what is it but madness — the madness of 
ignorant vanity and reckless obstinacy. 

I have known, and still know, many dissenters, who 
profess to have a zeal for Christianity ; and I dare say 
they have. But I have known very few dissenters 
indeed whose hatred to the Church of England was 
not a much more active principle of action with them 
than their love of Christianity. The Wesleyans, in 
uncorrupted parts of the country, are nearly the only 
exceptions. There never was an age since the days 
of the apostles in which the catholic spirit of religion 
was so dead, and put aside for love of sects and parties, 
as at present. 



I 



OF S. T. COLERIDGE. 13 

January 1, 1832. 
Gracefulness of Children — Dogs. 

How inimitably graceful children are in general be- 
fore they learn to dance ! 

There seems a sort of sympathy between the more 
generous dogs and little children. I believe an in- 
stance of a little child being attacked by a large dog 
is very rare indeed. 



January 28, 1832. 
Ideal Tory and Whig. 

The ideal Tory and the ideal Whig (and some such 
there have really been) agreed in the necessity and 
benefit of an exact balance of the three estates : but 
the Tory was more jealous of the balance being de- 
ranged by the people ; the Whig, of its being deranged 
by the Crown. But this was a habit, a jealousy only ; 
they both agreed in the ultimate preservation of the 
balance ; and accordingly, they might each, under cer- 
tain circumstances, without the slightest inconsistency, 
pass from one side to the other, as the ultimate object 
required it. This the Tories did at the Revolution, 
but remained Tories as before. 

1 have half a mind to write a critical and philosoph- 
ical essay on Whiggism, from Dryden's Achitopel 
(Shaftesbury), the first Whig (for, with Dr. Johnson's 

leave, the devil is no such cattle), down to , who, I 

trust, in God's mercy to the interests of peace, imion, 
and liberty in this nation, will be the last. In it I 
would take the last years of Queen Anne's reign as the 
zenith, or palmy state, of Whiggism in its divinest ava- 
tar of common sense, or of the understanding, vigor- 
ously exerted in the right direction on the right and 
proper objects of the understanding ; and would then 
trace the rise, the occasion, the progress, and the ne- 
cessary degeneration of the Whig spirit of compro- 

VoL. XL— B 



14 TABLE TALK 

mise, even down to the profound ineptitudes of their 
party in these days. A clever fellow might make 
something of this hint. How Asgill would have 
done it ! 



February 22, 1832. 

The Church. 

The church is the last relic of our nationality. 
Would to God that the bishops and the clergy in gen- 
eral could once fully understand that the Christian 
church and the national church are as little to be con- 
founded as divided \ I think the fate of the Reform 
Bill, in itself, of comparatively minor importance ; 
the fate of the national church occupies my mind with 
greater intensity. 



February 24, 1832. 
Ministers and the Reform Bill. 

I COULD not help smiling, in reading the report of 
Lord Grey's speech in the House of Lords, the other 
night, when he asked Lord Wicklow whether he se- 
riously believed that he, Lord Grey, or any of the min- 
isters, intended to subvert the institutions of the coun- 
try. Had I been in Lord Wicklow's place, I should 
have been tempted to answer this question something 
in the following way :— 

" Waiving the charge in an offensive sense of personal 
consciousness against the noble earl, and all but one or 
two of his colleagues, upon my honour, and in the 
presence of Almighty God, I answer. Yes ! You have 
destroyed the freedom of Parliament ; you have done 
your best to shut the door of the House of Commons 
to the property, the birth,, the rank, the wisdom of the 
people, and have flung it open to their passions and 



OP S. T. COLERIDGE. 15 

their follies. You have disfranchised the gentry, and 
the real patriotism of the nation ; you have agitated 
and exasperated the mob, and thrown the balance of 
political power into the hands of that class (the shop- 
keepers) which, in all countries and in all ages, has 
been, is now, and ever will be, the least patriotic and 
the least conservative of any. You are now preparing 
to destroy for ever the constitutional independence of 
the House of Lords ; you are for ever displacing it from 
its supremacy as a co-ordinate estate o^ the realm ; 
and whether you succeed in passing your bill by actu- 
ally swamping our votes by a batch of new peers, or 
by frightening a sufficient number of us out of our 
opinions by the threat of one, — equally you will have 
superseded the triple assent which the constitution re- 
quires to the enactment of a valid law, and have left 
die king alone with the delegates of the populace 1" 



March 3, 1832. 

Disfranchisement, 

I AM afraid the consei-vative party see but one-half 
of the truth. The mere extension of the franchise is 
not the evil ; I should be glad to see it greatly ex- 
tended ; — there is no harm in that per se ; the mis- 
chief is that the franchise is nominally extended, but 
-to such classes, and in such a manner, that a practical 
disfranchisement of all above, and a discontenting of all 
below, a favoured class are the unavoidable results. 



March 17, 1832. 

Genius Feminine — Pirates. 

's face is almost the only exception I know to 

the observation, that something feminine — not effemi- 
nate, mind — is discoverable in the couatenances of all 



16 TABLE TALK 

men of genius. Look at the face of old Dampier, a 
rough sailor, but a man of exquisite mind. How soft 
is the air of his countenance, how delicate the shape 
of his temples ! 



I think it very absurd and misplaced to call Raleigh 
and Drake, and others of our naval heroes of Eliza- 
beth's age, pirates. No man is a pirate^ unless his 
contemporaries agree to call him so. Drake said, 
" The subjects of the King of Spain have done their 
best to ruin my country : ergo, I will try to ruin the 
King of Spain's country." Would it not be silly to call 
the Argonauts pirates in our sense of the word ? 



March 18, 1832. 

Astrology — Alchymy. 

It is curious to mark how instinctively the reason 
has always pointed out to men the ultimate end of the 
various sciences, and how immediately afterward they 
have set to work, like children, to realize that end by 
inadequate means. Now they applied to their appe- 
tites, now to their passions, now to their fancy, now to 
the understanding, and lastly to the intuitive reason 
again. There is no doubt but that astrology of some 
sort or other would be the last achievement of as- 
tronomy : there must be chymical relations between 
the planets ; the difference of their magnitudes com 
pared with that of their distances is not explicable 
otherwise ; but this, though, as it were, blindly and 
unconsciously seen, led immediately to fortune-telling 
and other nonsense. So alchymy is the theoretic 
end of chymistry ; there must be a common law, upon 
which all can become each and each all ; but then the 
idea was turned to the coining of gold and silver. 



i 



-OF S. T. COLERIDGE. 17 

March 20, 1832. 
Reform Bill — Crisis. 

I HAVE heard but two arguments of any weight ad- 
duced in favour of passing this Reform Bill, and they 
are in substance these : — I. We will blow your brains 
out if you don't pass it ; 2. We will drag you through 
a horsepond if you don't pass it ; — and there is a good 
deal of force in both. 

Talk to me of your pretended crisis ! Stuff! A vig- 
orous government would in one month change all the 
data for your reasoning. Would you have me believe 
that the events of this world are fastened to a revolv- 
ing cycle with God at one end and the devil at the 
other, and that the devil is now uppermost ! Are you 
a Christian, and talk about a crisis in that fatalistic 
sense ! 



March 31, 1832. 

John, Chap. III. Ver. 4 — Dictation and Inspiration 
— Gnosis — NeiD Testament Canon. 

I CERTAINLY Understand the ri ti^o} kx <ro yuvcci, in the 
second chapter * of St. John's Gospel, as having 
aliquid increpationis in it — a mild reproof from Jesus 
to Mary for interfering in his ministerial acts by re- 
quests on her own account. I do not think that yuvott 
was ever used by child to parent as a common mode 
of address : between husband and wife it was ; but I 
cannot think that f^rjrep and yuvcci were equivalent 
terms in the mouth of a son speaking to his mother. 
No part of the Christopaedia is found in John or Paul ; 
and after the baptism there is no recognition of any 
maternal authority in Mary. See the two passages 

* Verse 4. 
B2 



18 TABLE TALK 

where she endeavours to get access to him when he is 
preaching: — " Whosoever shall do the will of God, the 
same is my brother, and my sister, and my mother :"* 
and also the recommendation of her to the care of John 
at the crucifixion. 



There may be dictation without inspiration, and in- 
spiration without dictation ; they have been and con- 
tinue to be grievously confounded. Balaam and his 
ass were the passive organs of dictation ; but no one, 
I suppose, will venture to call either of those worthies 
inspired. It is my profound conviction that St. John 
and St. Paul were divinely inspired; but I totally dis- 
believe the dictation of any one word, sentence, or 
argument throughout their writings. Observe, there 
was revelation. All religion is revealed ; — revealed 
religion is, in my judgment, a mere pleonasm. Reve- 
lations of facts were undoubtedly made to the prophets ; 
revelations of doctrines were as undoubtedly made to 
John and Paul ; — but is it not a mere matter of our 
very senses that John and Paul each dealt with those 
revelations, expounded them, insisted on them, just 
exactly according to his own natural strength of intel- 
lect, habit of reasoning, moral, and even physical tem- 
perament? We receive the books ascribed to John 
and Paul as their books on the judgment of men for 
whom no miraculous judgment is pretended, nay, 
whom, in their admission and rejection of other books, 
we believe to have erred. Shall we give less credence 
to John and Paul themselves ? Surely the heart and 
soul of every Christian give him sufficient assurance 
that, in all things that concern him as a man, the words 
that he reads are spirit and truth, and could only pro- 
ceed from him who made both heart and soul. — Under- 
stand the matter so, and all difficulty vanishes : you 
read without fear, lest your faith meet with some shock 
from a passage here and there which you cannot recon- 
cile with immediate dictation, by the Holy Spirit of 

* Mark, chap. iii. ver. 35. 



OF S. T. COLERIDGE. 19 

Ood, without an absurd violence offered to the text. 
You read the Bible as the best of all books, but still as 
a book, and make use of all the means and appliances 
which learning and skill, under the blessing of God, 
can afford towards rightly apprehending the general 
sense of it — not solicitous to find out doctrine in mere 
epistolary familiarity, or facts in clear ad hominem et 
pro tempore allusions to national traditions. 

TertuUian, I think, says he had seen the autograph 
copies of some of the apostles' writings. The truth 
is, the ancient church was not guided by the mere fact 
of the genuineness of a writing in pronouncing it 
canonical ; — its catholicity was the test applied to it. 
I have not the smallest doubt that the epistle of Bar- 
nabas is genuine ; but it is not catholic ; it is full of 
the yvaa-ts, though of the most simple and pleasing 
sort. I think the same of Hermas. The church would 
never admit either into the canon, although the Alex- 
andrians always read the epistle of Barnabas in their 
churches for three hundred years together. It was up- 
wards of three centuries before the Epistle to the He- 
brews was admitted, and this on account of its yvarti; 
at length, by help of the venerable prefix of St. Paul's 
name, its admirers, happily for us, succeeded. 

So little did the early bishops and preachers think 
their Christian faith wrapped up in, and solely to be 
learned from, the New Testament, — indeed, can it be 
said that there was any such collection for three hun- 
dred years ? — that I remember a letter from * to a 

friend of his, a bishop in the East, in which he most 
evidently speaks of the Christian Scriptures as of 
works of which the bishop knew little or nothing. 

* I have lost the name which Mr. Coleridge mentioned.— Ed. 



20 TAPtE TALK. 



April 4, 1832. 
Vnitarianism. 

I MAKE the greatest difference between ans and isms. 
1 should deal insincerely with you, if I said that I 
thought Unitarianism was Christianity. No ; as I be- 
lieve and have faith in the doctrine, it is not the truth 
in Jesus Christ ; but God forbid that I should doubt 
that you, and many other Unitarians, as you call your- 
selves, are, in a practical sense, very good Christians. 
We do not win Heaven by logic. 

By-the-by, what do you mean by exclusively assum- 
ing the title of Unitarians ? As if Tri-Unitarians 
were not necessarily Unitarians, as much (pardon the 
illustration) as an apple-pie must of course be a pie ! % 
The schoolmen would, perhaps, have called you Uni- 
cists ; but your proper name is Psilanthropists — be- 
lievers in the mere human nature of Christ. 

Upon my word, if I may say so without offence, I 
really think many forms of Pantheistic Atheism more 
agreeable to an imaginative mind than Unitarianism 
as it is professed in terms : in particular, I prefer the 
Spinosistic scheme infinitely. The early Socinians 
were, to be sure, most unaccountable logicians ; but, 
when you had swallowed their bad reasoning, you 
came to a doctrine on which the heart, at least, might 
rest for some support. They adored Jesus Christ. 
Both Leelius and Faustus Socinus laid down the ador- 
ability of Jesus in strong terms. I have nothing, you 
know, to do with their logic. But Unitarianism is, in 
effect, the worst of one kind of Atheism, joined to the 
worst of one kind of Calvinism, like two asses tied tail 
to tail. It has no covenant with God ; and looks upon 
prayer as a sort of self-magnetizing — a getting of the 
body and temper into a certain status, desirable per se, 
but having no covenanted reference to the Being to 
whom the prayer is addressed. 



OP S. T. COLERIDGE. 21 

April 5, 1832. 

Moral Law of Polarity. 

It is curious to trace the operation of the moral law 
of polarity in the history of politics, religion, &c. 
When the maximum of one tendency has been attained, 
there is no gradual decrease, but a direct transition to 
its minimum, till the opposite tendency has attained its 
maximum ; and then you see another corresponding 
revulsion. With the Restoration came in all at once 
the mechanico-corpuscular philosophy, which, with the 
increase of manufactures, trade, and arts, made every 
thing in philosophy, religion, and poetry, objective ; 
till, at length, attachment to mere external worldliness 
and forms got to its maximum, — when out burst the 
French revolution ; and with it every thing became 
immediately subjective, without any object at all. The 
Rights of Man, the Sovereignty of the People, were 
subject and object both. We are now, I think, on 
the turning point again. This Reform seems the 
ne plus ultra of that tendency of the public mind which 
substitutes its own undefined notions or passions for 
real objects and historical actualities. There is not 
one of the ministers — except the one or two revolu- 
tionists among them — who has ever given us a hint, 
throughout this long struggle, as to what he really does 
believe will be the product of the bill ; what sort of 
House of Commons it will make for the purpose of 
governing this empire soberly and safely. No ; they 
have actualized for a moment a wish, a fear, a passion, 
but not an idea. 



TABLE TALK 



Epidemic Disease — Quarantine. 

There are two grand divisions under which all con- 
tagious diseases may be classed: — 1. Those which 
spring from organized living beings, and from the life 
in them, and which enter, as it were, into the life of 
those in whom they reproduce themselves— such as 
small-pox and measles. These become so domesti- 
cated with the habit and system, that they are rarely 
received twice. 2. Those which spring from dead 
organized, or unorganized matter, and which may be 
comprehended under the wide term malaria. 

You may have passed a stagnant pond a hundred 
times without injury ; you happen to pass it again, in 
low spirits and chilled, precisely at the moment of the 
explosion of the gas : the malaria strikes on the cuta- 
neous, or veno-glandular system, and drives the blood 
from the surface ; the shivering fit comes on, till the 
musculo-arterial irritability reacts, and then the hot fit 
succeeds ; and, unless bark or arsenic — particularly 
bark, because it is a bitter as well as a tonic — be ap- 
plied to strengthen the veno-glandular, and to moderate 
the musculo-arterial, system, a man may have the ague 
for thirty years together. 

But if, instead of being exposed to the solitary mala- 
ria of a pond, a man, travelling through the Pontine 
Marshes, permits his animal energies to flag, and sur- 
renders himself to the drowsiness which generally at- 
tacks him, then blast upon blast strikes upon the cuta- 
neous system, and passes through it to the musculo- 
arterial, and so completely overpowers the latter, that 
it cannot react, and the man dies at once, instead of 
only catching an ague. 



There are three factors of the operation of an epi- 
demic, or atmospheric disease. The first and princi- 
pal one is the predisposed state of the body ; secondly, 



OF S. T. COLERIDGE. 23 

the specific virus in the atmosphere ; and, thirdly, the 
accidental circumstances of weather, locality, food, 
occupation, &;c. Against the second of these we are 
powerless ; its nature, causes, and sympathies are too 
subtle for our senses to find data to go upon. Against 
the first, medicine may act profitably. Against the 
third, a wise and sagacious medical police ought to be 
adopted ; but, above all, let every man act like a Chris- 
tian, in all charity, and love, and brotherly kindness, 
and sincere reliance on God's merciful providence. 

Quarantine cannot keep out an atmospheric disease ; 
but it can, and does always, increase the predisposing 
causes of its reception. 



April 10, 1832. 
Harmony. 

All harmony is founded on a relation to rest — on 
relative rest. Take a metallic plate, and strew sand 
on it ; sound a harmonic chord over the sand, and the 
grains will whirl about in circles, and other geometri- 
cal figures, all, as it were, depending on some point of 
sand relatively at rest. Sound a discord, and every 
grain will whisk about without any order at all, in no 
figures, and with no points of rest. 

The clerisy of a nation, that is, its learned men, 
whether poets, or philosophers, or scholars, are these 
points of relative rest. There could be no order, na 
harmony of the whole, without them. 



April 21, 1832. 

Intellectual Revolutions — Modern Style. 

There have been three silent revolutions in Eng- 
land: — first, when the professions fell off from the 



24 TABLE TALK 

church ; secondly, when literature fell off from the 
professions ; and, thirdly, when the press fell off from 
literature. 



Common phrases are, as it were, so stereotyped now 
by conventional use, that it is really much easier to 
write on the ordinary politics of the day in the com- 
mon newspaper style, than it is to make a good pair of 
shoes. An apprentice has as much to learn now to be 
a shoemaker as ever he had ; but an ignorant coxcomb, 
with a competent want of honesty, may very effect- 
ively wield a pen in a newspaper office, with infinitely 
less pains and preparation than were necessary form- 
erly. 



April 23, 1832. 

Genius of the Spanish and Italians — Vico — Spinasa. 

The genius of the Spanish people is exquisitely 
subtle, without being at all acute ; hence there is so 
much humour and so little wit in their literature. 
The genius of the Italians, on the contrary, is acute, 
profound, and sensual, but not subtle ; hence, what 
they think to be humorous is merely witty. 

To estimate a man like Vico, or any great man who 
has made discoveries and committed errors, you ought to 
say to yourself: — " He did so and so in the year 1690, 
a Papist, at Naples. Now, what would he not have 
done if he had lived now, and could have availed him- 
self of all our vast acquisitions in physical science ?" 

After the Scienza Nuova, read Spinosa, De Monar- 
chia ex rationis prcBscripto* They differed — Vico in 
thinking that society tended to monarchy ; Spinosa in 

* Tractatus Politici, c. vi. 



OF S. T. COLERIDGE. 



25 



thinking it tended to democracy. Now, Spinosa's 
ideal democracy was realized by a contemporary — not 
in a nation, for that is impossible, but in a sect — I 
mean by George Fox and his Quakers.* 



April 24, 1832. 

Colours. 

Colours may be best expressed by a heptad, the 
largest possible formula for things finite, as the pentad 
is the smallest possible form. Indeed, the heptad of 
things finite is in all cases reducible to the pentad. 
The adorable tetractys, or tetrad, is the formula of 
God ; which again is reducible into, and is, in reality, 
the same with, the Trinity. Take colours thus : — 



Prothesis. 

Bed, or Colour Kar iloxnv- 



Mesothesis, or Indifference of 
Red and Yellow = Orange. _1- 



Thesis = Yellow X 



To which you must add 




Indigo, Violet = Indifference of 
Red and Blue. 



XBIue = Antithesis. 



T^^hich is a spurious or artificial syn- 
thesis of Yellow and Blue.t 



* Spinosa died in 1677 ; Fox in 1681.— Ed. 

+ I trust this touch of the polar logic will not frighten the 
general reader. The students of Mr. Coleridge's latter works 
are familiar enough with it ; and the scheme is as simple as it is 
beautiful and comprehensive. — Ed, 

Vol. II.— C 



26 TABLE TALK 



April 28, 1832. 

Destruction of Jerusalem — Epic Poenu 

The destruction of Jerusalem is the only subject 
now remaining for an epic poem ; a subject which, 
like Milton's Fall of Man, should interest all Christ- 
endom, as the Homeric War of Troy interested all 
Greece. There would be difficulties, as there are in 
all subjects ; and they must be mitigated and thrown 
into the shade, as Milton has done with the numerous 
difficulties in the Paradise Lost. But there would be a 
greater assemblage of grandeur and splendour than can 
now be found in any other theme. As for the old mythol- 
ogy, incrcdulus od'i ; and yet there must be a mythology, 
or a ^Ma^i-mythology, for an epic poem. Here there 
would be the completion of the prophecies — the termi- 
nation of the first revealed national religion under the 
violent assault of Paganism, itself the immediate fore- 
runner and condition of the spread of a revealed mundane 
religion ; and then you would have the character of the 
Roman and the Jew, and the awfulness, the complete- 
ness, the justice. I schemed it at twenty-five ; but, 
alas ! venturum expectat. 



ApiaL29, 1832. 

Vox Fopuli, Vox Dei — Black. 

I NEVE 11 said that the vox populi was of course the 
vox Dei. It may be ; but it may be, and with equal 
probability, a priori, vox Diaboli. That the voice of 
ten millions of men calling for the same thing is a spirit, 
I believe; but whether that be a spirit of heaven or 
hell, I can only know by trying the thing called for by 
the prescript of reason and God's will. 

Black is the negation of colour in its greatest energy. 



OF S. T. COLERIDGE. 27 

Without lustre, it indicates or represents vacuity, as, 
for instance, in the dark mouth of a cavern ; add lus- 
tre, and it will represent the highest degree of solidity, 
as in a polished ebony box. 



In finite forms there is no real and absolute iden- 
tity. God alone is identity. In the former, the pro- 
thesis is a bastard prothesis, a quasi identity only. 



April 30, 1832. 

Asgill and Defoe, 

I KNOW no genuine Saxon English superior to As- 
gilPs. I think his and De Foe's irony often finer than 
Swift's. 



May 1, 1832. 

Home Tooke — Fox and Pitt. 

HoRNE Tooke's advice to the Friends of the Peo- 
ple was profound : — ^' If you wish to be powerful, 
pretend to be powerful." 

Fox and Pitt constantly played into each other's 
hands. Mr. Stewart of the Courier, a very knowing 
person, soon found out the gross lies and impostures 
of that club as to its numbers, and told Fox so. Yet, 
instead of disclaiming them and exposing the pretence, 
as he ought to have done, Fox absolutely exaggerated 
their numbers and sinister intentions ; and Pitt, who 
also knew the lie, took him at his word, and argued 
against him triumphantly on his own premises. 

Fox's Gallicism, too, was a treasury of weapons to 
Pitt. He could never conceive the French right with- 
out making the English wrong. Ah ! I remember — 



28 TABLE TALK 

it vex'd my soul to see 

So grand a cause, so proud a realm 
With Goose and Goody at the helm ; 
Who long ago had fall'n asunder 
But for their rivals' baser blunder, 
The coward whine and Frenchiefid 
Slaver and slang of the other side ! 



May 2, 1832. 

Horner. 

I CANNOT say that I thought Mr. Horner a man of 
genius. He seemed to me to be one of those men 
who have not very extended minds, but who know what 
they know very well — shallow streams, and clear be- 
cause they are shallow. There was great goodness 
about him. 



May 3, 1832. 

Adiaphori — Citizens and Christians. 

is one of those men who go far to shake my 

faith in a future state of existence : I mean, on ac- 
count of the difficulty of knowing where to place him. 
I could not bear to roast him ; he is not so bad as all that 
comes to : but then, on the other hand, to have to sit 
down with such fellow in the very lowest pot-house of 
heaven, is utterly inconsistent with the belief of that 
place being a place of happiness for me. 



In two points of view, I reverence man ; first, as a 
citizen, a part of, or in order to, a nation ; and secondly, 
as a Christian. If men are neither the one nor the 
other, but a mere aggregation of individual bipeds, who 
acknowledge no national unity, nor believe with me in 
Christ, I have no more personal sympathy with them 
than with the dust beneath my feet. 



OF S. T. COLERIDGE. 29 



May 21, 1832. 



Professor Park — Engli&k Constitution — Democracy 
— Milton and Sidney, 

Professor Park talks* about its being very doubt- 
ful whether the constitution described by Blackstone 
ever in fact existed. In the same manner, I suppose, it 
is doubtful whether the moon is made of green cheese, 
or whether the souls of Welshmen, do, in point of fact, 
go to heaven on the backs of mites. Blackstone's 
was the age of shallow law. Monarchy, aristocracy, 
and democracy, as such., exclude each the other : but if 
the elements are to interpenetrate, how absurd to call a 
lump of sugar, hydrogen, oxygen, and carbon ! nay, to 
take three lumps, and call the first, hydrogen ; the 
second, oxygen ; and the third, carbon ! Don't you 
see that each is in all, and all in each ? 

The democracy of England, before the Reform Bill, 
was, where it ought to be, in the corporations, the ves- 
tries, the joint-stock companies, &;c. The power, in 
a democracy, is in focal points, without a centre ; and, 
in proportion as such democratical power is strong, the 
strength of the central government ought to be intense 
— otherwise the nation will fall to pieces. 

We have just now incalculably increased the demo- 
cratical action of the people, and, at the same time, 
weakened the executive power of the government. 

* In his " Dogmas of the Constitution, four Lectures on the 
Theory and Practice of the Constitution, dehvered at the King's 
College, London," 1832. Lecture L There was a stiffness, and 
an occasional unconthness in Professor Park's style ; but his two 
•works, the one just mentioned, and his " Contre-Projet to the 
Humphreysian Code," are full of original views and vigorous 
reasonings. To those who wished to see the profession of the 
law assume a more scientific character than for the most part it 
has hitherto done in England, the early death of John James Park 
wajj a very great loss. — Ed. 

C2 



30 TABLE TALK 

It was the error of Milton, Sidney, and others of 
that age, to think it possible to construct a purely aris- 
tocratical government, defecated of all passion, and 
ignorance, and sordid motive. The truth is, such a 
government would be weak from its utter want of sym- 
pathy with the people to be governed by it. 



May 25, 1832. 

De Vi Minimoi'um. — Hahnemann. — Luther. ■ 

Mercury strongly illustrates the theory de vi mini- 
morum. Divide five grains into fifty doses, and they 
may poison you irretrievably. I don't believe in all 
that Hahnemann says ; but he is a fine fellow, and, like 
most Germans, is not altogether wrong, and like them 
also, is never altogether right. 



Six volumes of translated selections frofn Luther's 
works, two being from his Letters, would be a delight- 
ful work. The translator should be a man deeply im- 
bued with his Bible, with the English writers from 
Henry the Seventh to Edward the Sixth, the Scotch 
divines of the 16th century, and with the old racy 
German.* 

Hugo de Saint Victor,t Luther's favourite divine, 
was a wonderful man, who, in the 12th century, the 

* Mr. Coleridge was fond of pressing this proposed publication ; 
— '" I can scarcely conceive," he says in the Friend, " a more de- 
lightful volume than might be made from Luther's letters, especi- 
ally those that were written firom the Warteburg, if they were 
translated in the simple, sinewy, idiomatic, hearty mother tongue 
of the original. A difficult task I admit, and scarcely possible 
for any man, however great his talents in other respects, whose 
favourite reading has not lain among the English writers from 
Edward the Sixth to Charles the First." Vol. i. p. 235. n. — Ed. 

t This celebrated man was a Fleming, and a member of the 
Augustinian Society of St. Victor. He died at Paris in 1142, 
aged forty- four. His age considered, it is sufficient praise for him 
that Protestants and Romanists both claim him for their own on 
the subject of transubstantiation. — Ed 



OF S. T. COLERIDGE. ,31 

jubilant age of papal dominion, nursed the lamp of 
Platonic mysticism in the spirit of the most refined 
Christianity. 



June 9, 1832. 

Sympathy of Old Greelc and Latin with English. — 
Roman Mind. — War, 

If you take Sophocles, Catullus, Lucretius, the bet- 
ter parts of Cicero, and so on, you may, with just two 
or three exceptions, arising out of the different idioms 
as to cases, translate page after page into good mother 
English, word by word, without altering the order ; but 
you cannot do so with Virgil or Tibullus ; if you at- 
tempt it you will make nonsense. 



There is a remarkable power of the picturesque in 
the fragments we have of Ennius, Actius, and other 
very old Roman writers. This vivid manner was lost 
in the Augustan age. 



Much as the Romans owed to Greece in the begin- 
ning, while their mind was, as it were, tuning itself to 
an after-effort of its own music, it suffered more in 
proportion by the influence of Greek literature subse- 
quently, when it was already mature, and ought to have 
worked for itself. It then became a superfetation 
upon, and not an ingredient in, the national character. 
With the exception of the stem pragmatic historian 
and the moral satirist, it left nothing original to the 
Latin Muse.* 



A nation to be great, ought to be compressed in its 

* Perhaps it left letter-writing also. Even if the Platonic 
epistles are taken as genuine, which Mr. Coleridge, to my sur- 
prise, was inclined to believe, they can hardly interfere, I think, 
with the uniqueness of the truly incomparable collections from the 
correspondence of Cicero and Pliny. — Ed. 



32 TABLE TALK 

increment by nations more civilized than itself — as 
Greece by Persia ; and Rome by Etruria, the Italian 
. states, and Carthage. I remember Commodore Deca- 
tur saying to me at Malta, that he deplored the occupa- 
tion of Louisiana by the United States, and wished 
that province had been possessed by England. He 
thought that if the United States got hold of Canada 
by conquest or cession, the last chance of his country 
becoming a great compact nation virould be lost. 



War in republican Rome vi^as the offspring of its 
intense aristocracy of spirit, and stood to the state in 
lieu of trade. As long as there was any thing ab ex- 
tra to conquer, the state advanced ; when nothing re- 
mained but what was Roman, then, as a matter of 
course, civil war began. 



June 10, 1832. 

Charm for Cramp. 

When I was a little boy at the Blue-coat School, 
there was a charm for one's foot when asleep ; and I 
believe it had been in the school since its foundation, 
in the time of Edward the Sixth. The march of in- 
tellect has probably now exploded it. It ran thus : — 

Foot ! foot ! foot ! is fast asleep ! 

Thumb ! thumb ! thumb ! in spittle we steep ; 

Crosses three we make to ease us, 

Two for the thieves, and one for Christ Jesus ! 

And the same charm served for a cramp in the leg, 
with the following substitution : — 

The devil is tying a knot in my leg ! 

Mark, Luke, and John, unloose it, I beg ! — 

Crosses three, &c. 

And really, upon getting out of bed, where the cramp 
most frequently occurred, pressing the sole of the foot 



OF S. T. COLERIDGE. 33 

on the cold floor, and then repeating this charm with 
the acts configurative thereupon prescribed, I can 
safely affirm, that I do not remember an instance in 
which the cramp did not go away in a few seconds. 

I should not wonder if it were equally good for a 
stitch in the side ; but I cannot say I ever tried it for 
ihat. 



July 7, 1832. 

Greek. — Dual^ Neuter Plural, and Vcrh Singular. — 
Tketa. 

It is hardly possible to conceive a language more 
perfect than the Greek. If you compare it with the 
modern European tongues, in the points of the position 
and relative bearing of the vowels and consonants on 
each other, and of the variety of terminations, it is in- 
calculably before all in the former particulars, and only 
equalled in the last by the German. But it is in va- 
riety of termination alone that the German surpasses 
the other modern languages as to sound ; for, as to 
position, nature seems to have dropped an acid into 
the language when a-forming, which curdled the vow- 
els, and made all the consonants flow together. The 
Spanish is excellent for variety of termination ; the 
Italian, in this particular, the most deficient. Italian 
prose is excessively monotonous. 

It is very natural to have a dual, duality being a con- 
ception quite distinct from plurality. Most very pri- 
mitive languages have a dual, as the Greek, Welsh, and 
the native Chilese, as you will see in the Abbe Raynal. 

The neuter plural governing, as they call it, a verb 
singular is one of the many instances in Greek of the 
inward and metaphysic grammar resisting success- 
fully the tyranny of formal grammar. In truth, there 
may be multeity in things ; but there can only be plu- 
rality in persons. 



34 TABLE TALK 

Observe also that, in fact, a neuter noun in Greek 
has no real nominative case, though it has a formal 
one, that is to say, the same word with the accusative. 
The reason is — a thing has no subjectivity, or nomina- 
tive case : it exists only as an object in the accusative 
or oblique case. 

It is extraordinary that the Germans should not have 
retained or assumed the two beautifully discriminated 
sounds of the soft and hard theta ; as in, thy thoughts 
— the thin ether that, &c. How particularly fine the 
hard, theta is in an English termination, as in that grand 
word— Death — for which the Germans gutturize a 
sound that puts you in mind of nothing but a loathsome 
toad. 



July 8, 1832. 

Talented.. 

I REGRET to see that vile and barbarous vocable 
talented, stealing out of the newspapers into the lead- 
ing reviews and most respectable publications of the 
day. Why not shillinged, farthinged, tenpenced, &;c. ? 
The formation of a participle passive from a noun is a 
license that nothing but a very peculiar felicity can 
excuse. If mere convenience is to justify such at- 
tempts upon the idiom, you cannot stop till the language 
becomes, in the proper sense of the word, corrupt. 
Most of these pieces of slang come from America.* 

Never take an iambus as a Christian name. A 
trochee, or tribrach, will do very well. Edith and 
Rothaf are my favourite names for women. 

* They do ; and I dare say, since Mr. Washington Irving's 
" Tour on the Prairies," — the best Enghsh, upon the whole, he 
has yet written, — we shall have " eventuate'^ in next year's An- 
nuals, &c. — Ed. 

t Rotha is a beautiful name indeed, and now finding its way 
southward from the lovely stream from which it was taken. — Ed. 



I 



OF S. T. COLERIDGE. 35 



July 9, 1832. 
Homer — Valckenaer. 

I HAVE the firmest conviction that Homer is a mere 
traditional synonyme with, or figure for, the Iliad. 
You cannot conceive for a moment any thing about the 
poet, as you call him, apart from that poem. Differ- 
ence in men there was in degree, but not in kind ; one 
man was, perhaps, a better poet than another ; but he 
was a poet upon the same ground and with the same 
feelings as the rest. 

The want of adverbs in the Iliad is very character- 
istic. With more adverbs there would have been some 
subjectivity, or subjectivity would have made them. 

The Greeks were then just on the verge of the 
bursting forth of individuahty. 

Valckenaer's treatise on the interpolation of the 
Classics by the later Jews and early Christians is well 
worth your perusal as a scholar and critic* 



July 13, 1832. 

Principles and Facts — Schmidt. 

I HAVE read all the famous histories, and, I believe, 
some history of every country and nation that is, or 
ever existed ; but I never did so for the story itself as 
a story. The only thing interesting to me was the 
principles to be evolved from, and illustrated by, the 
facts. t After I had gotten my principles, I pretty gen- 

* I confess I do not know which 9f the numerous works of this 
splendid scholar Mr. Coleridge, meant. There is not, to my rec- 
ollection, any treatise of Valckenaer's bearing such a title in 
terms, although there are one or two which might comprehend 
the subject. I believe to this day many of Valckenaer's compo- 
sitions remain unpublished. — Ed. 

t " The true origin of human events is so little susceptible of 
that kind of evidence which can compel our belief; so many are 



36 TABLE TALK 

erally left the facts to take care of themselves. I 
never could remember any passages in books, or the 
particulars of events, except in the gross. I can refer 
to them. To be sure, I must be a different sort of 
man from Herder, who once was seriously annoyed 
with himself, because, in recounting the pedigree of 
some German royal or electoral family, he missed 
some one of those worthies and could not recall the 



Schmidt* was a Romanist; but I have generally 
found him candid, as indeed almost all the Austrians 
are. They are what is called good Catholics., but, 

the disturbing forces which, in every cycle or eUipse of changes, 
modify the motion given by the first projection ; and every age 
has, or imagines it has, its own circumstances, which render past 
experience no longer applicable to the present case ; that there will 
never be wanting answers, and explanations, and specious flatteries 
of hope, to persuade and perplex its government, that the history of 
the past is inapplicable to their case. And no wonder, if we read 
history for the facts, instead of reading it for the sake of the gen- 
eral principles, which are to the facts as the root and sap of a tree 
to its leaves : and no wonder if history so read should find a dan- 
gerous rival in novels ; nay, if the latter should be preferred to the 
former, on the score even of probability. I well remember that, 
when the examples of former Jacobins, as Julius Caesar, Crom- 
well, and the like, were adduced in France and England, at the 
commencement of the French consulate, it was ridiculed as ped- 
antry and pedant's ignorance to fear a repetition of usurpation and 
military despotism at the close of the enlightened eighteenth cen- 
tury I Even so in the very dawn of the late tempestuous day, 
when the revolutions of Corcyra, the proscriptions of the reform- 
ers Marius, Caesar, &c., and the direful effects of the levelling 
tenets in the peasants' war in Germany (differenced from the te- 
nets of the first French constitution only by the mode of word- 
ing them, the figures of speech being borrowed in the one instance 
from theology, and in the other from modem metaphysics), were 
urged on the convention and its vindicators ; the magi of the day, 
the true citizens of the world, the plusquam p erf ecti of Tpainotism, 
gave us set proofs that similar results were impossible, and that 
it was an insult to so philosophical an age, to so enlightened a 
nation, to dare direct the pubUc eye towards them as to lights of 
warning." — Statesman''s Manual, p. 14. 

♦ Michael Ignatius Schmidt, the author of the History of the 
Germans. He died in the latter end of the last century.— Ed. 



OF S. T. COLERIDGE. 37 

like our Charles the Second, they never let their re- 
ligious bigotry interfere with their political well-doing. 
Kaiser is a most pious son of the church, yet he al- 
ways keeps his papa in good order. 



July 20, 1832. 

Puritans and Jacobins. 

It was God's mercy to our age that our Jacobins 
were infidels and a scandal to all sober Christians. 
Had they been like the old Puritans, they would have 
trodden church and king to the dust — at least for a time. 



For one mercy I owe thanks beyond all utterance, — 
that, with all ray gastric and bowel distempers, my 
head hath ever been like the head of a mountain in 
blue air and sunshine. 



July 21, 1832. 

Wordsworth. 

I HAVE often wished that the first two books of the 
Excursion had been published separately, under the 
name of " The Deserted Cottage." They would have 
formed, what indeed they are, one of the most beauti- 
ful poems in the language. 

Can dialogues in verse be defended? I cannot but 
think that a great philosophical poet ought always to 
teach the reader himself as from himself. A poem 
does not admit argumentation, though it does admit 
development of thought. In prose there may be a 
difference ; though I must confess that, even in Plato 
and Cicero, I am always vexed that the authors do not 
say what they have to say at once in their own persons. 
The introductions and little urbanities are, to be sure. 

Vol. II.— > 



38 TABLE TALK 

very delightful in their way ; I would nol lose thein : 
but I have no admiration for the practice of ventrilo- 
quizing through another man's mouth. 

I cannot help regretting that Wordsworth did not 
first publish his thirteen books on the growth of an in- 
dividual mind — superior, as I used to think, upon the 
whole, to the Excursion. You may judge how I felt 
about them by my own poem upon the occasion.* Then 
the plan laid out, and, I believe, partly suggested by me^ 
was, that Wordsworth should assume the station of a man 
in mental repose, one whose principles were made up, 
and so prepared to deliver upon authority a system of 
philosophy. He was to treat man as man, — a subject 
of eye, ear, touch, and taste, in contact with external 
nature, and informing the senses from the mind, and 
not compounding a mind out of the senses ; then he 
was to describe the pastoral and other states of so- 
ciety, assuming something of the Juvenalian spirit as 
he approached the high civilization of cities and towns, 
and opening a melancholy picture of the present state 
of degeneracy and vice ; thence he was to infer and 
reveal the proof of, and necessity for, the whole state 
of man and society being subject to, and illustrative 
of, a redemptive process in operation, showing how 
this idea reconciled all the anomalies, and promised 
future glory and restoration. Something of this sort 
was, I think, agreed on. It is, in substance, what I 
have been all my life doing in my system of philoso- 
phy- 

I think Wordsworth possessed more of the genius 
of a great philosophic poet than any man I ever knew, 
or, as I believe, has existed in England since Milton ; 

* Poetical Works, vol. i. p. 206. It is not too much to say of 
this beautiful poem, and yet it is difficult to say more, that it i» 
at once worthy of the poet, his subject, and his object : — 

" An Orphic song indeed, 
A song divine of higli and passionate thoughts. 
To their own music chanted." — Ed. 



F S. T. COLERIDGE. 39 

birt it seems to me that he ought never to have aban- 
doned the contemplative position, which is pecuHarly, 
perhaps I migiit say exclusively, fitted for him. His 
proper title is, Spectator ab extra. 



July 23, 1832. 

French Revolution. 

No man was more enthusiastic than I was for 
France and the Revolution: it had all my wishes, 
none of my expectations. Before 1793, I clearly 
saw, and often enough stated in public, the horrid delu- 
sion, the vile mockery, of the whole affair.* When 

* " Forgive me, Freedom ! O forgive those dreams ! 
I hear thy voice, I hear thy loud lament, 
From bleak Helvetia's icy cavern sent — 
I hear thy groans upon her blood-stain'd streams I 
Heroes, that for your peaceful country perish'd, 
And ye that, fleeing, spot your mountain-snows 
With bleeding wounds ; forgive me, that I cherish'd 
One thought that ever bless'd your cruel fees ! 
To scatter rage and traitorous guilt, 
Where Peace her jealous home had built ; 
A patriot race to disinherit 
Of all that made their stormy wilds so dear ; 
And with inexpiable spirit 

To taint the bloodless freedom of the mountaineer — 
O France, that mockest Heaven, adult'rous, blhid, 
And patriot only in pernicious toils, 
Are these thy boasts, champion of human-kind 1 
To mix with kings in the low lust of sway. 
Yell in the hunt, and share the murderous prey — 
To insult the shrine of Liberty with spoils 
From freemen torn — to tempt and to betray"? 

■'* The Sensual and the Dark rebel in vain, 
Slaves by their own compulsion ! In mad game 
They burst their manacles, and wear the name 
Of freedom, graven on a heavier chain ! 
O Liberty ! with profitless endeavour 
Have I pursued thee, many a weary hour ; 
But thou nor swell'st the victor's train, nor ever 
Didst breathe thy ?oul in forms of h-iman power. 



40 TABLE-TALK 

some one said, in my brother James's presence,* thac 
I was a Jacobin, he very well observed, — " No ! Sam- 
uel is no Jacobin ; he is a hot-headed Moravian !" In- 
deed, I was in the extreme opposite pole. 



July 24, 1832. 

Infant Schools. 

I HAVE no faith in act-of-parliament reform. All 
the great — the permanently great — things that have 
been achieved in the world, have been so achieved by 
individuals, working from the instinct of genius or of 
goodness. The rage now-a-days is all the other way : 
the individual is supposed capable of nothing; there 
must be organization, classification, machinery, (fee, 
as if the capital of national morality could be increased 
by making a joint stock of it. Hence you see these 
infant schools so patronised by the bishops and others, 
who think them a grand invention. Is it found that an 
infant school child, who has been bawling all day a 
column of the multiplication table, or a verse from the 
Bible, grows up a more dutiful son or daughter to its 
parents ? Are domestic charities on the increase among 
families under this system? In a great town, in our 
present state of society, perhaps such schools may be 
a justifiable expedient — a choice of the lesser evil ; but 
as for driving these establishments into the country 
villages, and breaking up the cottage-home education, 

Alike from all, howe'er they praise thee 
(Nor prayer nor boastful name delays theeX 
Alike from priestcraft's harpy minions, 
And factious blasphemy's obscener slaves, 
Thou speedest on thy subtle pinions, ^ 

The guide of homeless winds, and playmate of the waves /" 
France, an Ode, Poetical Works, vol. i., p. 130. — Ed. 
* A soldier of the old cavalier stamp, to whom the King was 
the symbol of the majesty, as the Church was of the life, of the 
nation, and who would most assuredly have taken arms for one 
or the other against all the houses of commons or committees of 
public safety in the world. — Ed. 



I 



OP S. T. COLERIDGE. 41 

I think it one of the most miserable mistakes which 
the well-intentioned people of the day have yet made ; 
and they have made and are making a good many, 
God knows. 



July 25, 1832. 

Mr. Coleridge^s Philosophy — Sublimity — Solomon — 
Madness — C. Lamb. 

The pith of my system is, to make the senses out of 
the mind — not the mind out of the senses, as Locke did. 



Could you ever discover any thing sublime, in our 
sense of the term, in the classic Greek literature] I 
never could. Sublimity is Hebrew by birth. 



I should conjecture that the Proverbs and Eccle- 
siastes were written, or, perhaps, rather collected, about 
the time of Nehemiah. The language is Hebrew with 
Chaldaic endings. It is totally unlike the language of 
Moses on the one hand, and of Isaiah on the other. 



Solomon introduced the commercial spirit into his 
kingdom. I cannot think his idolatry could have been 
much more, in regard to himself, than a state protec- 
tion or toleration of the foreign worship. 



When a man mistakes his thoughts for persons and 
things, he is mad. A madman is properly so defined. 

Charles Lamb translated my motto, Sermoni propria" 
ra, by — properer for a sermon ! 



July 28, 1832. 

Faith and Belief. 

The sublime and abstruse doctrines of Christian be- 
lief belong to the church ; but the faith of the individ- 

4* 



42 TABLE-TALK 

ual, centred in his heart, is or may be collateral to 
them.* Faith is subjective. I throw myself in adora- 
tion before God ; acknowledge myself his creature, — 
simple, weak, lost ; and pray for help and pardon 
through Jesus Christ : but when I rise from my knees, 
I discuss the doctrine of the Trinity as I would a prob- 
lem in geometry ; in the same temper of mind, I 
mean, not by the same process of reasoning, of course. 



August 4, 1832. 

Dohrizhoffer.^ 

I HARDLY know any thing more amusing than the 
honest German Jesuitry of DobrizhofTer. His chapter 

* Mr. Coleridge used very frequently to insist upon the distinc- 
tion between belief and faith. He once told me, with very great 
earnestness, that if he were that moment convinced — a conviction, 
the possibility of which, indeed, he could not realize to himself — 
that the New Testament was a forgery from beginning to end — 
wide as the desolation in his moral feelings would be, he should 
not abate one jot of his faith in God's power and mercy through 
some manifestation of his being towards man, either in time past 
or future, or in the hidden depths where time and space are not. 
This was, I believe, no more than a vivid expression of what he 
always maintained, that no man had attained to a full faith who 
did not recognise in the Scriptures a correspondence to his own 
nature, or see that his own powers of reason, will, and under- 
standing were preconfigured to the reception of the Christian doc- 
trines and promises. — Ed. 
t '' He was a man of rarest qualities, 

Who to this barbarous region had confined 

A spirit with the learned and the wise 

Worthy to take its place, and from mankind 

Receive their homage, to the immortal mind 

Paid in its just inheritance of fame. 

But he to humbler thoughts his heart inclined ; 

From Gratz amid the Styrian hills he came. 
And Dobrizhoffer was the good man's honour'd name. 

" It was his evil fortune to behold 
The labours of his painful life destroy'd ; 
His flock which he had brought within the fold 
Dispersed ; the work of ages render'd void, 



OP S. T. COLERIDGE. 43 

on the dialects is most valuable. He is surprised that 
there is no form for the infinitive, but that they say, — 
I wish (go, or eat, or drink, &c.), interposing a letter 
by way of copula, — forgetting his own German and 
English, which are, in truth, the same. My dear 
daughter's translation of this book* is, in my judgment, 
unsurpassed for pure mother English by any thing I 
have read for a long time. 

And all of good that Paraguay enjoy'd 
By blind and suicidal power o'erthrown. 
So he the years of his old age employ'd, 
A faithful chronicler, in handing down 
Names which he loved, and things well worthy to be known, 

" And thus, when exiled from the dear-loved scene, 

In proud Vienna he beguiled the pain 

Of sad remembrance : and the empress-queen, 

That great Teresa, she did not disdain 

In gracious mood sometimes to entertain 

Discourse with him, both pleasurable and sage : 

And sure a willing ear she well might deign 

To one whose tales may equally engage 
The wondering mind of youth, the thoughtful heart of age. 

" But of his native speech, because well-nigh 

Disuse in him forgetfulness had wrought, 

In Latin he composed his history ; 

A garrulous, but a lively tale, and fraught 

With matter of delight and food for thought. 

And if he could in Merlin's glass have seen 

By whom his tomes to speak our tongue were taught, 

The old man would have felt as pleased, I ween, 
As when he won the ear of that great empress- queen. 

" Little he deem'd, when with his Indian band 
He through the wilds set forth upon his way, 
A poet then unborn, and in a land 
Which had proscribed his order, should one day 
Take up from thence his moralizing lay. 
And shape a song that, with no fiction dress'd, 
Should to his worth its grateful tribute pay. 
And sinking deep in many an English breast, 
Foster that faith divine that keeps the heart at rest." 

Southey^s Tale of Paraguay, Canto iii., st. 16. 
*■ " An Account of the Abipones, an Equestrian People of Par- 
aguay. From the Latin of Martin Dobrizhoffer, eighteen years 
a Missionary in that country." — Vol. ii., p. 176. 



44 TABLfi-TALK 

August 6, 1832. 

Scotch and English — Criterion of Genius — Dry den 
and Pope. 

I HAVE generally found a Scotchman with a little lit- 
erature very disagreeable. He is a superficial German 
or a dull Frenchman. The Scotch will attribute merit 
to people of any nation rather than the English ; the 
English have a morbid habit of petting and praising 
foreigners of any sort, to the unjust disparagement of 
their own worthies. 



You will find this a good gauge or criterion of genius, 
- — whether it progresses and evolves, or only spins 
upon itself. Take Dryden's Achitophel and Zimri,-^ 
Shaftesbury and Buckingham ; every line adds to or 
modifies the character, which is, as it were, a-building 
up to the very last verse ; whereas, in Pope's Timon, 
<fec., the first two or three couplets contain all the pith 
of the character, and the twenty or thirty lines that fol- 
low are so much evidence or proof of overt acts of 
jealousy, or pride, or whatever it may be that is satiri- 
sed. In like manner compare Charles Lamb's exquisite 
criticisms on Shakspeare, with Hazlitt's round and 
round imitations of them. 



August 7, 1832. 

MiUorCs Disregard of Painting, 

It is very remarkable that in no part of his writings 
does Milton take any notice of the great painters of Italy, 
nor, indeed, of painting as an art ; while every other 
page breathes his love and taste for music. Yet it is 
curious that, in one passage in the Paradise Lost, Mil- 
ton has certainly copied the fresco of the Creation in 
the Sistine Chapel at Rome. I mean those lines, — 

" now half appear'd 

The tawny lion, pawing to get free 



OF S. T. COLERIDGE. 45 

His hinder parts, then springs as broke from bonds, 
And rampant shakes his brinded. mane ; — " &c.* 

an image which the necessities of the painter justified, 
but which was wholly unworthy, in my judgment, of 
the enlarged powers of the poet. Adam bending over 
the sleeping Eve, in the Paradise Lost,t and Dalilah 
approaching Samson, in the Agonistes,J are the only 
two proper pictures I remember in Milton. 



August 9, 1832. 

Baptismal Service — Jews'' Division of the Scripture — 
Sanscrit. 

I THINK the baptismal service almost perfect. What 
seems erroneous assumption in it to me, is harmless. 
None of the services of the church affect me so much 
as this. I never could attend a christening without 

* Par. Lost, book vii., ver. 463. 

t " so much the more 



His wonder was to find unwaken'd Eve 
With tresses discomposed, and glowing cheeic, 
As through unquiet rest : he on his side 
Leaning, half raised, with looks of cordial love 
Hung over her enamour'd, and beheld 
Beauty, which, whether waking or asleep, 
Shot forth peculiar graces ; then, with voice 
Mild, as when Zephyrus on Flora breathes, 
Her hand soft touching, whisper'd thus : Awake, 
My fairest," &c. — Book v., ver. 8. 

' But who is this, what thing of sea or land 1 
Female of sex it seems. 
That so bedeck'd, ornate, and gay, 
Comes this way sailing 
Like a stately ship 
Of Tarsus, bound for the isles 
Of Javan or Gadire, 

With all her bravery on, and tackle trim, 
Sails fiU'd, and streamers waving. 
Courted by all the winds that hold them play. 
An amber-scent of odorous perfume 
Her harbinger, a damsel train behind !" 



46 TABLE-TALK 

tears bursting forth at the sight of the helpless inno- 
cent in a pious clergyman's arms. 

The Jews recognised three degrees of sanctity in 
their Scriptures : — first, the writings of Moses, who 
had the auro-^U ; secondly, the Prophets ; and, thirdly, 
the Good Books. Phiio, amusingly enough, places 
his works somewhere between the second and third 
degrees. 



The claims of the Sanscrit for priority to the He- 



brew as a language, are ridiculous. 



August 11, 1832. 

Hesiod — Virgil — Genius Metaphysical — Don Quixote. 

I LIKE reading Hesiod, meaning the Works and 
Days. If every verse is not poetry, it is, at least, 
good sense, which is a great deal to say. 



There is nothing real in the Georgics, except, to be 
sure, the verse.* Mere didactics of practice, unless 
seasoned with the personal interests of the time or 
author, are inexpressibly dull to me. Such didactic 
poetry as that of the Works and Days followed natu- 
rally upon legislation, and the first ordering of munici- 
palities- 



All genius is metaphysical ; because the ultimate 
end of genius is ideal, however it may be actualized 
by incidental and accidental circumstances. 



Don Quixote is not a man out of his senses, but a 
man in whom the imagination and the pure reason are 

* I used to fancy Mr. Coleridge -paulo iniquior Virgilio, and 
told hiru so : to which he replied, that, like all Eton men, I swore 
per Maroncm. This was far enough from being the case ; but I 
acknowledge that Mr. C.'s apparent indifference to the tenderness 
and dignity of Virgil excited my surprise. — Ed. 



OF S. T. COLERIDGE. 47 

SO powerful as to make him disregard the evidence of 
sense when it opposed their conclusions. Sancho is 
the common sense of the social man-animal, unen- 
lightened and unsanctified by the reason. You see 
how he reverences his master at the very time he is 
cheating him. 



August 12, 1832. 

Malthusianism. 

Is it not lamentable — is it not even marvellous-— 
that the monstrous practical sophism of Malthus should 
now have gotten complete possession of the leading 
men of the kingdom ! Such an essential lie in morals 
— such a practical lie in fact, as it is too ! I solemnly 
declare that I do not believe that all the heresies, and 
sects, and factions which the ignorance, and the weak- 
ness, and the wickedness of man have ever given birth 
to, were altogether so disgraceful to man as a Chris- 
tian, a philosopher, a statesman, or citizen, as this 
abominable tenet. It should be exposed by reasoning 
in the form of ridicule. Asgill or Swift would have 
done much ; but, like the Popish doctrines, it is so 
vicious a tenet, so flattering to the cruelty, the avarice, 
and sordid selfishness of most men, that I hardly know 
what to think of the result. 



August 14, 1832. 

Stcinmetz — Keats. 

Poor dear Steinmetz is gone — his state of sure 
blessedness accelerated ; or, it may be, he is buried in 
Christ, and there in that mysterious depth grows on to 
the spirit of a just man made perfect ! Could I for a 
moment doubt this, the grass would become black be- 
neath my feet, and this earthly frame a charnel-house. 
I never knew any man so illustrate the difference be- 
tween the feminine and the effeminate- 



48 TABLE-TALK 

A loose, slack, not well-dressed youth met Mr. 
and myself in a lane near Highgate. 



knew him, and spoke. It was Keais. He was intro- 
duced to me, and stayed a minute or so. After he had 
left us a little way he came back, and said : " Let me 
carry away the memory, Coleridge, of having pressed 
your hand !" — " There is death in that hand," I said to 
, when Keats was gone ; yet this was, I be- 
lieve, before the consumption showed itself distinctly. 



August 16, 1832. 

ChrisVs Hospital — Bowyer. 

The discipline at Christ's Hospital in my time was 
ultra-Spartan ; — all domestic ties were to be put aside. 
*' Boy !" I remember Bowyer saying to me once when 
I was crying, the first day of my return after the holy- 
days, " Boy ! the school is your father ! Boy ! the 
school is your mother! Boy! the school is your 
brother ! the school is your sister ! the school is your 
first cousin, and your second cousin, and all the rest 
of your relations ! Let's have no more crying !" 



No tongue can express good Mrs. Bowyer. Val. 
Le Grice and I were once going to be flogged for some 
domestic misdeed, and Bowyer was thundering away 
at us by way of prologue, when Mrs. B. looked in, and 
said, " Flog them soundly, sir, I beg !" This saved 
us. Bowyer was so nettled at the interruption, that he 
growled out, " Away, woman ! away I" and we were 
let off. 



August 18, 1832. 

St. PauVs Melita. 

The belief that Malta is the island on which St. 
Paul was wrecked is so rooted in the common Maltese, 



OF S. T. COLERIDGE, 49 

and is cherished with such a superstitious nationality, 
that the Government would run the chance of exciting 
a tumult, if it, or its representatives, unwarily ridiculed 
it. The supposition itself is quite absurd. Not to 
argue the matter at length, consider these few conclu- 
sive facts: — The narrative speaks of the "barbarous 
people," and " barbarians,"* of the island. Now, our 
Malta was at that time fully peopled and highly 
civilized, as we may surely infer from Cicero and 
other writers.! A viper comes out from the sticks 

* Acts, xxviii., 2 and 4. 

t Upwards of a century before the reign of Nero, Cicero speaks 
at considerable length of our Malta in one of the Verrine orations. 
— See Act. ii., lib. iv., c. 46. " Insula est Melita, judices," &c. 
There was a town, and Verres had established in it a manufac- 
tory of the fine cloth or cotton stuffs, the Melitensis vestis, fof 
which the island is uniformly celebrated : — 
" Fertilis est Melite sterili vicina Cocyrae 
Insula, quam Libyci verberat unda freti." 

Ovid. Fast, iii., 567. 
And Silius Italicus has — 

" telaque superha 

Lanigera Melite." 

Punic, xiv., 251. 
Yet it may have been cotton after all — the present product of 
Malta. Cicero describes an ancient temple of Juno situated on a 
promontory near the town, so famous and revered, that, even in 
the time of Masinissa, at least 150 years b. c, that prince had 
rehgiously restored some relics which his admiral had taken from 
it. The plunder of this very temple is an article of accusation 
against Verres ; and a deputation of Maltese {legati Melitenses) 
came to Rome to establish the charge. These are all the facts^ 
I think, which can be gathered from Cicero ; because I consider 
his expression of nudata urbes, in the working up of this article, 
a piece of rhetoric. Strabo merely marks the position of Melita^ 
and says that the lap-dogs called Kwihia Me^irnia were sent from 
this island, though other writers attribute them to the other 
Melite in the Adriatic. — (Lib. vi.) Diodorus, however, a Sicilian 
himself by birth, gives the following remarkable testimony as to 
the state of the island in his time, which, it will be remembered, 
was considerably before the date of St. Paul's shipwreck. 
" There are three islands to the south of Sicily, each of which has 
a city or town {irdhv), and harbours fitted for the safe reception of 
ships. The first of these is Melite, distant about 800 stadia 
from Syracuse, and possessing several harbours of surpassing ex- 

Vol. II.— C 5 



60 TABLE-TALK 

upon the fire being lighted : the men are not surprised 
at the appearance of the snake, but imagine first a 
murderer, and then a god, from the harmless attack. 
Now in our Malta there are, I may say, no snakes at 
all ; which, to be sure, the Maltese attribute to St. 
Paul's having cursed them away. Melita in the Adri- 
atic was a perfectly barbarous island as to its native 
population, and was, and is now, infested with serpents. 
Besides, the context shows that the scene is in the 
Adriatic. 



The Maltese seem to have preserved a fondness and 
taste for architecture from the time of the knights — 
naturally enough occasioned by the incomparable ma- 
terials at hand.* 



August 19, 1832. 

English and German — Best State of Society. 

It may be doubted whether a composite language 
like the English is not a happier instrument of expres- 
sion than a homogeneous one like the German. We 
possess a wonderful richness and variety of modified 
meanings in our Saxon and Latin quasi-synonymes, 
which the Germans have not. For " the pomp and prod- 
igality of Heaven," the Germans must have said, " the 
spendthriftness.'"j Shakspeare is particularly Iiappy 
in his use of the Latin synonymes, and in distinguish- 
ing between them and the Saxon. 

cellence. Its inhabitants are rich and luxurious (rovg KaroiKovvras 
Toii oiiaiais liiSaijiovas)- There are artisans of every kind {Kavro- 
ianovs Tois fpyaa/otj) ; the best are those who weave cloth of a 
singular fineness and softness. The houses are worthy of admi- 
ration for their superb adornment with eaves and brilliant white- 
washing {oIkIus a^io\6yovi Koi KartaKtvaajihai <f>i\oTi[JL(as yehaois xal 
Kovidixaat Trtpirrdrfpov)." — Lib. V., c. 13. Mela (ii., c. 7), and Pliny 
(iii., 14), simply mark the position. — Ed. 

* The passage which I have cited from Diodorus shows that 
the origin was much earlier. — Ed. 

t Verschwendung, I suppose. — Ed, 



OF S. T. COLERIDGE. 51 

That is the most excellent state of society in which 
the patriotism of the citizen ennobles, but does not 
merge, the individual energy of the man. 



September 1, 1832. 

Great Minds Androgynous — Philosopher'^ s Ordinary 
Language. 

In chymistry and nosology, by extending the degree 
to a certain point, the constituent proportion may be 
destroyed, and a new kind produced. 



I have known strong minds with imposing, undoubt- 
ing, Cobbett-like manners, but I have never met di great 
mind of this sort. And of the former, they are at least 
as often wrong as right. The truth is, a great mind 
must be androgynous. Great minds — Swedenborg's 
for instance — are never wrong but in consequence of 
being in the right, but imperfectly. 



A philosopher's ordinary language and admissions, 
in general conversation or writings ad populum, are as 
his watch compared with his astronomical timepiece. 
He sets the former by the town-clock, not because he 
believes it right, but because his neighbours and his 
cook go by it. 



January 2, 1833. 

Juries — Barristers^ and Physicians^ Fees — Quacks — 
CcBsarean Operation — Inherited Disease. 

I CERTAINLY think that juries would be more consci- 
entious, if they were allowed a larger discretion. But, 
after all, juries cannot be better than the mass out of 
which they are taken. And if juries are not honest 
and single-minded, they are the worst, because the 
least responsible, instruments of judicial or popular 
tyranny. 

C2 



• 



52 TABLE-TALK 

I should be sorry to see the honorary character of 
the fees of barristers and physicians done away with. 
Though it seems a shadowy distinction, I beheve it to 
be beneficial in effect. It contributes to preserve the 
idea of a profession, of a class which belongs to the 
public, — in the employment and remuneration of which 
no law interferes, but the citizen acts as he likes in 
jforo conscienticR, 



There undoubtedly ought to be a declaratory act, 
withdrawing expressly from the St. John Longs and 
other quacks the protection which the law is inclined 
to throw around the mistakes or miscarriages of the 
regularly-educated practitioner. 



I think there are only two things wanting to justify 
a surgeon in performing the Caesarean operation : first, 
that he should possess infallible knowledge of his art ; 
and, secondly, that he should be infallibly certain that 
he is infallible. 



Can any thing be more dreadful than the thought 
that an innocent child has inherited from you a disease 
or a weakness, the penalty in yourself of sin or want 
of caution ? 



In the treatment of nervous cases, he is the best 
physician who is the most ingenious inspirer of hope. 



January 3, 1833. 

Mason's Poetry. 

I CANNOT bring myself to think much of Mason's 
poetry. I may be wrong; but all those passages in 
the Caractacus which we learn to admire at school, 
now seem to me one continued /cZ^eW^?. 



of s. t. coleridge. 53 

January 4, 1833. 

Northern and Southern States of the American Union — 
All and the whole. 

Naturally one would have thought that there would 
have been greater sympathy between the northern and 
northwestern States of the American Union and Eng- 
land, than between England and the Southern States. 
There is ten times as much English blood and spirit 
in New-England as in Virginia, the Carolinas, (fee. 
Nevertheless, such has been the force of the interests 
of commerce, that now, and for some years past, the 
people of the North hate England with increasing bit- 
terness, while, among those of the South, who are 
Jacobins, the British connexion has become popular. 
Can there ever be any thorough national fusion of the 
Northern and Southern States ? I think not. In fact, 
the Union will be shaken almost to dislocation when- 
ever a very serious question between the States arises. 
The American Union has no centre, and it is impossible 
now to make one. The more they extend their borders 
into the Indians' land, the weaker will the national co- 
hesion be. But I look upon the States as splendid 
masses, to be used, by-and-by, in the composition of 
two or three great governments. 



There is a great and important difference, both in 
politics and metaphysics, between all and the whole. 
The first can never be ascertained as a standing quan- 
tity ; the second, if comprehended by insight into its 
parts, remains for ever known. Mr. Huskisson, I 
thought, satisfactorily refuted the ship-owners ; and yet 
the shipping interest, who must know where the shoe 
pinches, complain to this day. 
5* 



54 table-talk 

January 7, 1833. 

I^inth Article — Sin and Sins — Old Divines — Preaching 
Extempore. 
*' Very far gone," is quam longissime in the Latin of 
the ninth article, — as far gone as possible, that is, as 
was possible for man to go ; as far as was compatible 
with his having any redeemable qualities left in him. 
To talk of man's being utterly lost to good, is absurd ; 
for then he would be a devil at once. 



One mistake perpetually made by one of our unhappy 
parties in religion, — and with a pernicious tendency to 
Antinomianism, — is to confound sin with sins. To tell 
a modest girl, the watchful nurse of an aged parent, 
that she is full of sins against God, is monstrous, and 
as shocking to reason as it is unwarrantable by Scrip- 
ture. But to tell her that she, and all men and women, 
are of a sinful nature, and that without Christ's re- 
deeming love and God's grace she cannot be emanci- 
pated from its dominion, is true and proper.* 

No article of faith can be truly and duly preached 
without necessarily and simultaneously infusing a deep 
sense of the indispensableness of a holy life. 



How pregnant with instruction, and with knowledge 
of all sorts, are the sermons of our old divines ! in this 
respect, as in so many others, how different from the 
major part of modern discourses ! 



Every attempt, in a sermon, to cause emotion, ex- 
cept as the consequence of an impression made on the 

* In a marginal scrap Mr. C. wrote : — " What are the essen- 
tial doctrines of our religion, if not sin and original sin, as the ne- 
cessitating occasion, and the redemption of sinners by the Incar- 
nate Word as the substance of the Christian dispensation"? And 
■can these be intelligently beheved without knowledge and stead- 
fast meditation 1 By the unlearned they may be worthily re- 
ceived, but not by the unthinking and self-ignorant Christian." — 
Editor. 



OF S. T. COLERIDGE. 65 

reason, or the understanding, or the will, I hold to be 
fanatical and sectarian. 



No doubt preaching, in the proper sense of the word, 
is more effective than reading ; and, therefore, I would 
not prohibit it, but leave a liberty to the clergyman who 
feels himself able to accomplish it. But, as things now 
are, I am quite sure I prefer going to church to a pas- 
tor who reads his discourse : for I never yet heard 
more than one preacher without book, who did not for- 
get his argument in three minutes' time ; and fall into 
vague and unprofitable declamation, and, generally, 
very coarse declamation too. These preachers never 
progress ; they eddy round and round. Sterility of 
mind follows their ministry. 



January 20, 1833. 

Church of England, 

When the Church at the Reformation ceased to be 
extra-national, it unhappily became royal instead ; its 
proper bearing is intermediate between the crown and 
the people, with an inclination to the latter. 



The present prospects of the Church weigh heavily 
on my soul. Oh ! that the words of a statesman-like 
philosophy could win their way through the ignorant 
zealotry and sordid vulgarity of the leaders of the day ! 



February 5, 1833. 

Union with Ireland, 

If any modification of the Union takes place, I trust 
it will be a total divorce a vinculo matrimonii. I am 
sure we have lived a cat and dog life of it. Let us 
have no silly saving of one crown and two legislatures ; 
that would be preserving all the mischiefs without any 
of the goods, if there are any, of the union. 



66 TABLE-TALK 

I am deliberately of opinion, that England, in all its 
institutions, has received injury from its union with 
Ireland. My only difficulty is as to the Protestants, 
to whom we owe protection. But I cannot forget that 
the Protestants themselves have greatly aided in ac- 
celerating the present horrible state of things, by using 
that as a remedy and a reward which should have 
been to them an opportunity.* 

If the Protestant Church in Ireland is removed, of 
course the Romish Church must be established in its 
place. There can be no resisting it in common reason. 

* " Whatever may be thought of the settlement that followed 
the battle of the Boyne and the extinction of the war in Ireland, 
yet when this had been made and submitted to, it would have 
been the far wiser policy, I doubt not, to have provided for the 
safety of the constitution by improving the quality of the elective 
franchise, leaving the eligibility open, or, like the former, limited 
only by considerations of property. Still, however, the scheme 
of exclusion and disqualification had its plausible side. The ink 
was scarcely dry on the parchment-rolls and proscription-lists of 
the Popish parliament. The crimes of the man were generahzed 
into attributes of his faith ; and the Irish Catholics collectively 
were held accomplices in the perfidy and baseness of the king. 
Alas ! his immediate adherents had afforded too great colour to 
the charge. The Irish massacre was in the mouth of every Prot- 
estant, not as an event to be remembered, but as a thing of recent 
expectation, fear still blending with the sense of deliverance. At 
no time, therefore, could the disqualifying system have been en- 
forced with so little reclamation of the conquered party, or with 
so little outrage on the general feeling of the country. There 
was no time when it was so capable of being indirectly useful as 
a sedative, in order to the application of the remedies directly in- 
dicated, or as a counter-power, reducing to inactivity whatever 
disturbmg forces might have interfered with their operation. And 
had this use been made of these exclusive laws, and had they 
been enforced as the precursors and negative conditions, — but, 
above all, as bond fide accompaniments of a process of emancipa- 
tion, properly and worthily so named, the code would at this day 
have been remembered in Ireland only as when, recalling a dan- 
gerous fever of our boyhood, we think of the nauseous drugs and 
drenching-horn, and congratulate ourselves that our doctors now- 
a-days know how to manage these things less coarsely. But this 
angry code was neglected as an opportunity, and mistaken for a 
siibstitute : et hinc illae lacrymae !" — Church and State, p. 195. 



OF S. T. COLERIDGE. 57 

How miserably imbecile and objectless has the 
English government of Ireland been for forty years 
past ! Oh ! for a great man — but one really great man, 
— who could feel the weight and the power of a prin- 
ciple, and unflinchingly put it into act ! But truly there 
is no vision in the land, and the people accordingly 
perisheth. See how triumphant in debate and in 
action O'Connell is! Why? Because he asserts a 
broad principle, and acts up to it, rests all his body on 
it, and has faith in it. Our ministers — true Whigs in 
that, — have faith in nothing but expedients de die in 
diem. Indeed, what principles of government can they 
have, who in the space of a month recanted a life of 
political opinions, and now dare to threaten this and 
that innovation at the huzza of a mob, or m pique at a 
parliamentary defeat 1 



I sometimes think it just possible that the dissenters 
may once more be animated by a wiser and nobler 
spirit, and see their dearest interest in the Church of 
England as the bulwark and glory of Protestantism, as 
they did at the Revolution. But I doubt their being 
able to resist the low factious malignity U) the church, 
which has characterized them as a body for so many 
years. 



February 16, 1833. 

Faust — Michael Scott, Goethe, Schiller, and 
Wordsworth. 
Before I had ever seen any part of Goethe's Faust,* 

* " The poem was first published in 1790, and forms the com- 
mencement of the seventh volume of Goethe's Schrifien, Wien 
und Leipzig, bey J. Stahel and G. J. Goschen, 1790. This edi- 
tion is now before me. The poem is entitled, Faust, ein Frag- 
ment (not Doktor Faust, ein Trauerspiel, as IDoring says), and 
contains no prologue or dedication of any sort. It commences 
with the scene in Faust's study, ante, p. 17, and is continued, as 
now, down to the passage, ending, ante, p. 26, line 5. In the 
original, the line — 

C3 



58 TABLE-TALK 

though, of course, when I Avas familiar enough with 
Marlowe's, I conceived and drew up the plan of a work, 
a drama, which was to be, to my mind, what the Faust 
was to Goethe's. My Faust was old Michael Scott ; 
a much better and more likely original than Faust. 
He appeared in the midst of his college of devoted 
disciples, enthusiastic, ebullient, shedding around him 
bright surmises of discoveries fully perfected in after 
times, and inculcating the study of nature and its se- 
crets as the pathway to the acquisition of power. He 
did not love knowledge for itself — -for its own exceed- 
ing great reward — but in order to be powerful. This 
poison-speck infected his mind from the beginning. 
The priests suspect him, circumvent him, accuse him ; 
he is condemned, and thrown into solitary confinement : 
this constituted the prologus of the drama. A pause 
of four or five years takes place, at the end of which 
Michael escapes from prison, a soured, gloomy, mis- 
erable man. He will not, cannot study ; of what avail 
had all his study been to him ? His knowledge, great 
as it was, had failed to preserve him from the cruel 
fangs of the persecutors ; he could not command the 
lightning or ihe storm to wreak their furies upon the 
heads of those whom he hated and contemned, and yet 

" ' Und froh ist, wenn er Regenwiirmer findet' 
ends the scene. 

The next scene is one between Faust and Mephistopheles, and 
begins thus : — 

" < Und was der ganzen Menschheit zugetheilt ist,* 

i. e. with the passage {ante, p. 70) beginning, ' I will enjoy, in my 
own heart's core, all that is parcelled out among mankind,' &c. 
All that intervenes, in later editions, is wanting. It is thence- 
forth continued, as now, to the end of the cathedral scene (an/e, 
p. 170), except that the whole scene, in which Valentine is killed, 
is wanting. Thus, Margaret's prayer to the Virgin, and the ca- 
thedral scene, come together, and form the conclusion of the work. 
According to Doring's Verzeichniss, there was no new edition of 
Faust until 1807. According to Dr. Sieglitz, the first part of 
Faust first appeared, in its present shape, in the collected edition 
of Goethe's works, which was pubUshed in 1808." — Hayward's 
Translation of Faust, second edition, note, p. 215. 



( 






OP S. T. COLERIDGE. 59 

feared* Away with learning ! away with study ! to 
the winds with all pretences to knowledge ! We know 
nothing ; w^e are fools, wretches, mere beasts. Anon 
I began to tempt him. I made him dream, gave him 
ivine, and passed the most exquisite of women before 
him, but out of his reach. Is there, then, no knowl- 
edge by which these pleasures can be commanded ? 
That wai/ lay witchcraft, and accordingly to witchcraft 
Michael turns with all his soul. He has many failures 
and some successes ; he learns the chymistry of exciting 
drugs and exploding powders, and some of the prop- 
erties of transmitted and reflected light : his appetites 
and his curiosity are both stimulated, and his old cra- 
ving for power and mental domination over others re- 
vives. At last Michael tries to raise the devil, and 
the devil comes at his call. My devil was to be, like 
Goethe's, the universal humorist, who should make all 
things vain and nothing worth, by a perpetual collation 
of the great with the little in the presence of the infi- 
nite. I had many a trick for him to play, some better, 
I think, than any in the Faust. In the meantime, 
Michael is miserable ; he has power, but no peace, 
and he every day more keenly feels the tyranny of hell 
surrounding him. In vain he seems to himself to as- 
sert the most absolute empire over the devil, by im- 
posing the most extravagant tasks ; one thing is as easy 
as another to the devil. " What next, Michael ?" i» 
repeated every day with more imperious servility, 
Michael groans in spirit ; his power is a curse : he 
I commands women and wine ; but the women seem 
fictitious and devilish, and the wine does not make him 
drunk. He now begins to hate the devil, and tries to 
cheat him. He studies again, and explores the dark- 
: est depths of sorcery for a recipe to cozen hell ; but 
i all in vain. Sometimes the devil's finger turns over 
I the page for him, and points out an experiment, and 
' Michael hears a whisper — " Try that Michael !" The 
horror increases ; and Michael feels that he is a slave 
and a condemned criminal. Lost to hope, he throws 
himself into every sensual excess, — in the mid career 



60 TABLE-TALK 

of which he sees Agatha, my Margaret, and immedi" 
ately endeavours to seduce her. Agatha loves him ; 
and the devil facilitates their meetings; but she re- 
sists Michael's attempts to ruin her, and implores him 
not to act so as to forfeit her esteem. Long struggles 
of passion ensue, in the result of which his affections 
are called forth against his appetites, and, love-bom, 
the idea of a redemption of the lost will dawns upon 
his mind. This is instantaneously perceived by the 
devil ; and for the first time the humorist becomes se- 
vere and menacing. A fearful succession of conflicts 
between Michael and the devil takes place, in which 
Agatha helps and suffers. In the end, after subjecting 
him to every imaginable horror and agony, I made him 
triumphant, and poured peace into his soul in the 
conviction of a salvation for sinners through God's 
grace. 

The intended theme of the Faust is the conse- 
quences of a misology, or hatred and depreciation of 
knowledge, caused by an originally intense thirst for 
knowledge baffled. But a love of knowledge for itself, 
and for pure ends, would never produce such a miso- 
logy ; but only a love of it for base and unworthy pur- 
poses. There is neither causation nor progression in 
the Faust ; he is a ready-made conjurer from the very 
beginning ; the incredulus odi is felt from the first line. 
The sensuality and the thirst after knowledge are un- 
connected with each other. Mephistopheles and Mar- 
garet are excellent ; but Faust himself is dull and 
meaningless. The scene in Auerbach's cellars is one 
of the best, perhaps the very best ; that on the Brocken 
is also fine ; and all the songs are beautiful. But there 
is no whole in the poem ; the scenes are mere magic- 
lantern pictures, and a large part of the work is to me 
very flat. The German is very pure and fine. 



The young men in Germany and England who ad- 
mire Lord Byron, prefer Goethe to Schiller ; but you 
may depend upon it, Goethe does not, nor ever will, 
command the common mind of the people of Germany 



OF S. T. COLERIDGE. 61 

as Schiller does. Schiller had two legitimate phases 
in his intellectual character : the first as author of the 
Robbers — a piece which must not be considered with 
reference to Shakspeare, but as a work of the mere 
material sublime ; and in that line it is undoubtedly- 
very powerful indeed. It is quite genuine, and deeply 
imbued with Schiller's own soul. After this he out- 
grew the composition of such plays as the Robbers, 
and at once took his true and only rightful stand in the 
grand historical drama, the Wallenstein — not the in- 
tense drama of passion — he was not master of that — 
but the diffused drama of history, in which alone he 
had ample scope for his varied powers. The Wallen- 
stein is the greatest of his works ; it is not unlike 
Shakspeare's historical plays — a species by itself. You 
may take up any scene, and it will please you by itself; 
just as you may in Don Quixote, which you read 
through once or twice only, but which you read in 
repeatedly. After this point it was that Goethe and 
other writers injured by their theories the steadiness 
and originality of Schiller's mind ; and in every one 
of his works after the Wallenstein you may perceive 
the fluctuations of his taste and principles of compo- 
sition. He got a notion of re-introducing the charac- 
terlessness of the Greek tragedy with a chorus, as in 
the Bride of Messina, and he was for infusing more 
lyric verse into it. Schiller sometimes aflected to 
despise the Robbers and the other works of his first 
youth ; whereas he ought to have spoken of them as 
of works not in a right line, but full of excellence in 
their way. In his ballads and lighter lyrics Goethe is 
most excellent. It is impossible to praise him too 
highly in this respect. I like the Wilhelm Meister 
the best of his prose works. But neither Schiller's 
nor Goethe's prose style approaches toLessing's, whose 
Avritings, for manner^ are absolutely perfect. 



Although Wordsworth and Goethe are not much 
alike, to be sure, upon the whole, yet they both have 
this peculiarity of utter non-sympathy with the subjects 
6 



62 TABLE-TALK 

of their poetry. They are always, both of them, spec- 
tators ah extra — feeling/o/-, but never with, their char- 
actets. Schiller is a thousand times more hearty than 
Goethe. 



I was once pressed, many years ago, to translate 
the Faust ; and I so far entertained the proposal as to 
read the work through with great attention, and to re- 
vive in my mind my own former plan of Michael 
Scott. But then I considered with myself whether the 
time taken up in executing the translation might not 
more worthily be devoted to the composition of a work 
which, even if parallel in some points to the Faust, 
should be truly original in motive and execution, and 
therefore more interesting and valuable than any ver- 
sion which I could make ; and, secondly, I debated 
with myself whether it became my moral character to 
render into English — and so far, certainly, lend my 
countenance to language — much of which 1 thought 
vulgar, licentious, and blasphemous. I need not tell 
you that I never put pen to paper as a translator of 
Faust. 

I have read a good deal of Mr. Hayward's version, 
and I think it done in a very manly style ; but I do not 
admit the argument for prose translations. I would in 
general rather see verse attempted in so capable a lan- 
guage as ours. The French can't help themselves, of 
course, with such a language as theirs. 



February 17, 1833. 

Beaumont and Fletcher — Ben Jonson — Massinger. 

In the romantic drama, Beaumont and Fletcher are 
almost supreme. Their plays are in general most 
truly delightful. I could read the Beggar's Bush from 
morning to night. How sylvan and sunshiny it is ! 
The Little French Lawyer is excellent. Lawrit is 
conceived and executed from first to last in ffcnuine 



OF S. T. COLERIDGE. 63 

comic humour. Monsieur Thomas is also capital. I 
have no doubt whatever that the first act and the first 
scene of the second act of the Two Noble Kinsmen 
are Shakspeare's. Beaumont and Fletcher's plots 
are, to be sure, wholly inartificial ; they only care to 
pitch a character into a position to make him or her 
talk ; you must swallow all their gross improbabilities, 
and, taking it all for granted, attend only to the dia- 
logue. How lamentable it is that no gentleman and 
scholar can be found to edit these beautiful plays !* 
Did the name of criticism ever descend so low as in 
the hands of those two fools and knaves, Seward and 
Simpson? There are whole scenes in their edition 
which I could with certainty put back into their original 
verse, and more that could be replaced in their native 
prose. Was there ever such an absolute disregard of 
literary fame as thai displayed by Shakspeare and 
Beaumont and Fletcher ?t 



In Ben Jonson you have an intense and burning art. 
Some of his plots, that of the Alchymist, for example, 
are perfect. Ben Jonson and Beaumont and Fletcher 
would, if united, have made a great dramatist indeed, 

* I believe Mr. Dyce could edit Beaumont and Fletcher as well 
as any man of the present or last generation ; but the truth is, the 
limited sale of the late editions of Ben Jonson, Shirley, &.c., has 
damped the spirit of entei-prise among the respectable publishers. 
Still I marvel that some cheap reprint of B. and F. is not under- 
taken. — Ed. 

t " The men of the greatest genius, as far as we can judge 
from their own works, or from the accounts of their contempora- 
iies, appear to have been of calm and tranquil temper, in all that 
related to themselves. In the inward assurance of permanent 
fame, they seemed to have been either indifferent or resigned 
with regard to immediate reputation." 

* * * * * * 

" Shakspeare's evenness and sweetness of temper were almost 
proverbial in his own age. That this did not arise from igno- 
rance of his own comparative greatness, we have abundant proof 
in his sonnets, which could scarcely have been known to Mr. Pope, 
when he asserted, that our great bard ' grew immortal in his own 
despite.' " — Biog. Lit., vol. i., p. 32. 



64 TABLE-TALK 

and yet not have come near Shakspeare ; but no doubt 
Ben Jonson was the greatest man after Shakspeare in 
that age of dramatic genius. 



The styles of Massinger's plays and the Samson 
Agonistes are the two extremes of the arc within which 
the diction of dramatic poetry may oscillate. Shak- 
speare in his great plays is the midpoint. In the 
Samson Agonistes, colloquial language is left at the 
greatest distance, yet something of it is preserved, to 
render the dialogue probable : in Massinger the 
style is differenced, but differenced in the smallest 
degree possible, from animated conversation, by the 
vein of poetry. 

There's such a divinity doth hedge our Shakspeare 
round, that we cannot even imitate his style. I tried 
to imitate his manner in the Remorse, and, when I 
had done, I found I had been tracking Beaumont and 
Fletcher and Massinge;: instead. It is really very 
curious. At first sight, Shakspeare and his con- 
temporary dramatists seem to write in styles much 
alike : nothing so easy as to fall into that of Massinger 
and the others ; while no one has ever yet produced 
one scene conceived and expressed in the Shakspearian 
idiom. I suppose it is because Shakspeare is uni- 
versal, and, in fact, has no manner ; just as you can so 
much more readily copy a picture than Nature herself. 



February 20, 1833. 

House of Commons appointing the Officers of the Army 
and Navy. 

I WAS just now reading Sir John Cam Hobhouse's 
answer to Mr. Hume, or some other of that set, upon 
the point of transferring the patronage of the army 
and navy from the Crown to the House of Commons. 
I think, if I had been in the House of Commons, I 
would have said, " that, ten or fifteen years ago, I 
should have considered Sir J. C. H.'s speech quite 



OF S. T. COLERIDGEc 65 

unanswerable, — it being clear constitutional law that 
the House of Commons has not, nor ought to have, 
any share, directly or indirectly, in the appointment 
of the officers of the army or navy. But now that the 
King had been reduced, by the means and procure- 
ment of the Honourable Baronet and his friends, to a 
puppet, which, so far from having any independent 
will of its own, could not resist a measure which it 
hated and condemned, it became a matter of grave 
consideration whether it was not necessary to vest the 
appointment of such officers in a body like the House 
of Commons, rather than in a junta of ministers, who 
were obliged to make common cause with the mob 
and democratic press for the sake of keeping their 
places." 



March 9, 1833. 

Penal Code in Ireland — Churchmen. 
The penal code in Ireland, in the beginning of th© 
last century, was justifiable, as a temporary means of 
enabling government to take breath and look about 
them ; and if right measures had been systematically 
pursued in a right spirit, there can be no doubt that all, 
or the greater part, of Ireland, would have become 
Protestant. Protestantism under the Charter Schools 
was greatly on the increase in the early part of that 
century, and the complaints of the Romish priests to 
that eff'ect are on record. But, unfortunately, the 
drenching-horn was itself substituted for the medicine. 



There seems to me, at present, to be a curse upon 
the English church, and upon the governors of all in- 
stitutions connected with the orderly advancement of 
national piety and knowledge ; it is the curse of pru- 
dence, as they miscall it — in fact, of fear. 

Clergymen are now almost afraid to explain in their 

pulpits the grounds of their being Protestants. They 

are completely cowed by the vulgar harassings of the 

press and of our Hectoring sciolists in Parliament. 

6* 



66 TABLE-TALK 

There should be no party politics in the pulpit, to be 
sure ; but every church in England ought to resound 
with national politics, — I mean the sacred character 
of the national church, and an exposure of the base 
robbery from the nation itself — for so indeed it is*-r- 

* " That the maxims of a pure morality, and those sublime 
truths of the divine unity and attributes, which a Plato found it 
hard to learn, and more difficult to reveal ; that these should have 
become the almost hereditary property of childhood and poverty, 
of the hovel and the workshop ; that even to the unlettered they 
sound as common-place ; this is a phenomenon which must with- 
hold all but minds of the most vulgar cast from undervaluing the 
services even of the pulpit and the reading-desk. Yet he who 
should confine the efficiency of an established church to these, 
can hardly be placed in a much higher rank of intellect. That to 
every parish throughout the kingdom there is transplanted a germe 
of civilization ; that in the remotest villages there is a nucleus, 
round which the capabilities of the place may crystallize and 
brighten ; a model sufficiently superior to excite, yet sufficiently 
near to encourage and facilitate imitation ; this unobtrusive, con- 
tinuous agency of a Protestant church establishment, this it is, 
which the patriot and the philanthropist, who would fain unite 
the love of peace with the faith in the progressive amelioration of 
mankind, cannot estimate at too high a price. * It cannot be val- 
ued with the gold of Ophir, with the precious onyx, or the sap- 
phire. No mention shall be made of coral or of pearls ; for the 
price of wisdom is above rubies.' — The clergyman is with his 
parishioners and among them ; he is neither in the cloistered cell 
nor in the wilderness, but a neighbour and family man, whose ed- 
ucation and rank admit him to the mansion of the rich landholder, 
while his duties make him the frequent visiter of the farm-house 
and the cottage. He is, or he may become, connected with the 
families of his parish or its vicinity by marriage. And among the 
instances of the blindness, or, at best, of the short-sightedness, 
which it is the nature of cupidity to inflict, I know few more 
striking than the clamours of the farmers against church property. 
Whatever was not paid to the clergyman would inevitably at the 
next lease be paid to the landholder ; while, as the case at pres- 
ent stands, the revenues of the church are in some sort the rever- 
sionary property of every family that may have a member educa- 
ted for the church, or a daughter that may marry a clergyma^n. 
Instead of being foreclosed and immoveable, it is, in fact, the only 
species of landed property that is essentially moving*^nd circulative. 
That there exist no inconveniences, who will pretend to assert 1 — 
But I have yet to expect the proof, that the inconveniences are 
greater in this than in any other species ; or that either the farmers 
or the clergy would be benefited by forcing the latter to become 
either Trullibersox sdihiied placemen.'^ — Church and State, i>. 90 



OF S. T. COLERIDGE. 67 

about to be committed by these ministers, in order to 
have a sop to throw to the Irish agitators, who will, of 
course, only cut the deeper, and come the oftener. 
You cannot buy off a barbarous invader. 



March 12, 1833. 

Coronation Oaths. 

Lord Grey has, in Parliament, said two things: 
first, that the Coronation Oaths only bind the king in 
his executive capacity ; and, secondly, that members 
of the House of Commons are bound to represent 
by their votes the wishes and opinions of their con- 
stituents, and not their own. Put these two together, 
and tell me what useful part of the constitutional mon- 
archy of England remains. It is clear that the Coro- 
nation Oaths would be no better than Highgate oaths. 
For in his executive capacity the king cannot do any 
thing, against the doing of which the oaths bind him ; 
it is only in his legislative character that he possesses 
a free agency capable of being bound. The nation 
meant to bind that. 



March 14, 1833. 

Divinity — Professions and Trades. 

Divinity is essentially the first of the professions, 
because it is necessary for all at all times ; law and 
physic are only necessary for some at some times. I 
speak of them, of course, not in their abstract exist- 
ence, but in their applicability to man. 



Every true science bears necessarily within itself 
the germe of a cognate profession, and the more you 
can elevate trades into professions the better. 



68 table-talk 

March 17,1833. 

Modern Political Economy. 

What solemn humbug this modern political econ- 
omy is. What is there true of the little that is true in 
their dogmatic books which is not a simple deduction 
from the moral and religious credenda and agenda of 
any good man, and with which we were not all previ- 
ously acquainted, and upon which every man of com- 
mon sense instinctively acted 1 I know none. But 
what they truly state, they do not truly understand in 
its ultimate grounds and causes ; and hence they have 
sometimes done more mischief by their half-ignorant 
and half-sophistical reasonings about, and deductions 
from, well founded positions, than they could have done 
by the promulgation of positive error. This particu- 
larly applies to their famous ratios of increase between 
jnan and the means of his subsistence. Political 
economy, at the highest, can never be a pure science. 
You may demonstrate that certain properties inhere in 
the arch, which yet no bridge-builder can ever reduce 
into brick and mortar ; but an abstract conclusion in a 
matter of political economy, the premises of which nei- 
ther exist now, nor ever will exist within the range of 
the wildest imagination, is not a truth, but a chimera — 
a practical falsehood. For there are no theorems in 
political economy — but pi'oblems only. Certain things 
being actually so and so, the question is, how to do so 
and so with them. Vo\\\,\c2\ philosophy, indeed, points to 
ulterior ends, but even those ends are all practical ; 
and if you desert the conditions of reality, or of com- 
mon probability, you may show forth your eloquence or 
your fancy, but the utmost you can produce will be a 
Utopia or Oceana, 

You talk about making this article cheaper by redu- 
cing its price in the market from Sd. to Qd. But sup- 
pose, in so doing, you have rendered your country 
weaker against a foreign 'foe ; suppose you have de- 
moralized thousands of your fellow-countrymen, and 
have sown discontent betv/een one class of society and 



I 



OF S. T. COLERIDGE. 69 

another ; your article is tolerably dear, I take it, after 
all. Is not its real price enhanced to every Christian 
and patriot a hundred-fold ? 



All is an endless fleeting abstraction ; the w/wle is a 
reality. 



March 31, 1833. 

National Debt — Property/ Tax — Duty of Landholders, 

What evil results to this country, taken at large, 
from the National Debt ? I never could get a plain and 
practical answer to that question. As to taxation to 
pay the interest, how can the country suffer by a pro- 
cess under which the money is never one minute out 
of the pockets of the people ? You may just as well 
say that a man is weakened by the circulation of his 
blood. There may, certainly, be particular local evils 
and grievances resulting from the mode of taxation or 
collection ; but how can that debt be in any proper 
sense a burden to the nation, which the .nation owes to 
itself, and to no one but itself? It is a juggle to talk 
of the nation owing the capital or the interest to the 
stockholders ; it owes to itself only. Suppose the in- 
terest to be owing to the Emperor of Russia, and then 
you would feel the difference of a debt in the proper 
sense. It is really and truly nothing more in effect 
than so much money, or money's worth, raised annu- 
ally by the state for the purpose of quickening indus- 
try.* 

* See the splendid essay in the Friend (vol. ii., p. 47), on the 
vulgar errors respecting taxes and taxation. 

" A great statesman, lately deceased, in one of his anti-minis- 
terial harangues against some proposed impost, said, ' The nation 
has been already bled in every vein, and is faint with loss of 
blood.' This blood, however, was circulating in the meantime 
through the whole body of the state, and what was received into 
one chamber of the heart was instantly sent out again at the other 
portal. Had he wanted a metaphor to convey the possible inju- 
ries of taxation, he might have found one less opposite to the fact, 



70 TABLE-TALK 

I should like to see a well-graduated property tax, 
accompanied by a large loan. 

One common objection to a property tax is, that it 
tends to diminish the accumulation of capital. In my 
judgment, one of the chief sources of the bad economy 
of the country now is the enormous aggregation of 
capitals. 



When shall we return to a sound conception of the 
right to property — namely, as being official, implying 
and demandmg the performance of commensurate du- 
ties ! Nothing but the most horrible perversion of hu- 
manity and moral justice, under the specious name of 
political economy, could have blinded men to this truth 
as to the possession of land, — the law of God having 
connected indissolubly the cultivation of every rood 
of earth with the maintenance and watchful labour 
of man. But money, stock, riches by credit, trans- 
ferable and convertible at will, are under no such 

in the known disease of aneurism, or relaxation of the coats of 
particular vessels, by a disproportionate accumulation of blood ia 
them, which sometimes occurs when the circulation has beau 
suddenly and violently changed, and causes helplessness, or 
even mortal stagnation, though the total quantity of blood remains 
the same in the system at large. 

" But a fuller and fairer symbol of taxation, both in its possible 
good and evil effects, is to be found in the evaporation of waters 
from the surface of the earth. The sun may draw up the moist- 
ure from the river, the morass, and the ocean, to be given back 
in genial showers to the garden, to the pasture, and the cornfield ; 
but it may, likewise, force away the moisture from the lields of 
tillage, to drop it on the stagnant pool, the saturated swamp, or 
the unprofitable sandwaste. The gardens in the south of Europe 
supply, perhaps, a not less apt illustration of a system of finance 
judiciously conducted, where the tanks or reservoirs would repre- 
sent the capital of a nation, and the hundred rills, hourly varying 
their channels and directions under the gardener's spade, give a 
pleasing image of the dispersion of that capital through the whole 
population by the joint effect of taxation and trade. For taxation 
itself is a part of commerce, and the government may be fairly 
considered as a great manufacturing house, carrying on, in differ- 
ent places, by means of its partners and overseers, the trades of 
the shipbuilder, the clothier, the iron-founder," &,c. &c. — Ed. 



OF S. T. COLERIDGE. 71 

obligations ; and, unhappily, it is from the selfish au- 
tocratic possession of such property, that our land- 
holders have learned their present theory of trading with 
that which was never meant to be an object of com- 
merce. 



April 5, 1833. 

Massinger — Shakspeare — HieronimOi 

To please me, a poem must be either music or 
sense ; if it is neither, I confess I cannot interest my- 
self in it. 



The first act of the Virgin Martyr is as fine an act 
as I remember in any play. The Very Woman is, I 
think, one of the most perfect plays we have. There 
is some good fun in the first scene between Don John, 
or Antonio, and Cuculo, his master ;* and can any 
thing exceed the skill and sweetness of the scene be- 
tween him and his mistress, in which he relates his 
story ?t The Bondman is also a delightful play. 

* Act iii., sc. 2. 

t Act iv., sc. 3 : — 

" Ant. Not far from where my father lives, a lady, 
A neighbour by, bless'd with as great a beauty 
As nature durst bestow without undoing, 
Dwelt, and most happily, as I thought then. 
And bless'd the home a thousand times she dwelt in. 
This beauty, in the blossom of my youth. 
When my first fire knew no adulterate incense, 
Nor I no way to flatter, but my fondness ; 
In all the bravery my friends could show me, 
In all the faith my innocence could give me. 
In the best language my true tongue could tell me, 
And all the broken sighs my sick heart lent me, 
I sued and served : long did I love this lady, 
Long was my travail, long my trade to win her ; 
With all the duty of my soul, I served her. 

Alm. How feelingly he speaks ! {Aside.) And she lovedl 
you too"? 
It must be so. 

Ant. I would it had, dear lady ; 



72 TABLE-TALK 

Massinger is always entertadning ; his plays have the 
interest of novels. 

But, like most of his contemporaries, except Shak- 
speare, Massinger often deals in exaggerated passion. 
Malefort senior, in the Unnatural Combat, however he 
may have had the moral will to be so wicked, could 
never have actually done all that he is represented as 
guilty of, without losing his senses. He would have 

This story had been needless, and this place, 
I think, unknown to me. 

Alm. Were your bloods equal 1 

Ant. Yes, and I thought our hearts too. 

Alm. Then she must love. 

Ant. She did — but never me ; she could not love me. 
She would not love, she hated ; more, she scorn'd me, 
And in so poor and base a way abused me, 
For all my services, for all my bounties, 
So bold neglects flung on me. 

Alm. An ill woman ! 

Belike you found some rival in your love, theni 

Ant. How perfectly she points me to my story ! 

(Aside.) 
Madam, I did ; and one whose pride and anger, 
111 manners, and worse mien, she doted on. 
Doted to my undoing, and my ruin. 
And, but for honour to your sacred beauty, 
And reverence to the noble sex, though she fall, , 

As she must fall that durst be so unnoble, 
I should say something unbeseeming me. 
What out of love, and worthy love, I gave her. 
Shame to her most unworthy mind ! to fools. 
To girls, and fiddlers, to her boys she flung. 
And in disdain of me. 

Alm. Pray you take me with you. 

Of what complexion was she 1 

Ant. But that I dare not 

Commit so great a sacrilege 'gainst virtue, 
She look'd not much unlike — though far, far short, 
Something, I see, appears — your pardon, madam — 
Her eyes would smile so, but her eyes could cozen 
And so she would look sad ; but yours is pity, 
A noble chorus to my wretched story ; 
Hers was disdain and cruelty. 

Alm. Pray heaven, 

Mine be no worse ! he has told me a strange story. 
{Aside.y &c.— Ed. 



I 



DP S. T. COLERIDGE. 73 

been in fact mad. Regan and Goneril are the only- 
pictures of the unnatural in Shakspeare ; the pure un- 
natural — and you will observe that Shakspeare has left 
their hideousness unsoftened or diversified by a single 
line of goodness or common human frailty. Whereas 
in Edmund, for whom passion, the sense of shame as 
a bastard, and ambition, offer some plausible excuses, 
Shakspeare has placed many redeeming traits. Ed- 
mund is what, under certain circumstances, any man 
of powerful intellect might be, if some other qualities 
and feelings were cut off. Hamlet is, inclusively, an 
Edmund, but different from him as a whole, on account 
of the controlling agency of other principles which 
Edmund had not. 



Remark the use which Shakspeare always makes 
of his bold villains, as vehicles for expressing opinions 
and conjectures of a nature too hazardous for a wise 
man to put forth directly as his own, or from any sus- 
tained character. 



The parts pointed out in Hieronimo as Ben Jonson's 
bear no traces of his style ; but they are very like 
Shakspeare's ; and it is very remarkable that every 
one of them reappears in full form and development, 
and tempered with mature judgment, in some one or 
other of Shakspeare's great pieces.* 

* By Hieronimo Mr. Coleridge meant The Spanish Tragedy, 
and not the previous play, which is usually called The First Part 
of Jeronimo. The Spanish Tragedy is, upon the authority of 
Heywood, attributed to Kyd. It is supposed that Ben Jonson 
originally performed the part of Hieronimo, and hence it has been 
surmised that certain passages and whole scenes connected with 
that character, and not found in some of the editions of the play, 
are, in fact, Ben Jonson's own writing. Some of these supposed 
interpolations are among the best things in the Spanish Tragedy ; 
the style is singularly unlike Jonson's, while there are turns and 
particular images which do certainly seem to have been imitated 
by or from Shakspeare. Mr. Lamb at one time gave them to 
Webster. Take this passage, in the fourth act: — 
" HiERON. What make you with your torches in the darki 
Pedro. You bid us light them, and attend you here. , 

Vol. II.— D 7 



74 TABLE-TALK 

April 7, 1833. 

Love's Labour Lost — Gifford^s Massinger — Shakspeare 
— The Old Dramatists. 

I THINK I could point out to a half line what is really 
Shakspeare's in Love's Labour Lost, and some other 
of the non-genuine plays. What he wrote in that play 
is of his earliest manner, having the all-pervading 
sweetness which he never lost, and that extreme con- 
densation which makes the couplets fall into epigrams, 

HiERON. No ! you are deceived ; not I ; you are deceived 
Was I so mad to bid light torches now 1 
Light me your torches at the mid of noon, 
When as the sun-god rides in all his glory ; 
Light me your torches then. 

Pedro. Then we burn daylight. 

HiERON. [Let it be burnt ; night is a murd'rous slut, 
That would not have her treasons to be seen ; 
And yonder pale-faced Hecate there, the moon. 
Doth give consent to that is done in darkness ; 
And all those stars that gaze upon her face 
Are aglets on her sleeve, pins on her train ; 
And those that should be powerful and divine, 
Do sleep in darkness when they most should shine.] 

Pedro. Provoke them not, fair sir, with tempting words, 
The heavens are gracious, and your miseries and sorrow 
Make you speak you know not what. 

Hieron. [Villain ! thou liest, and thou dost naught 
But tell me I am mad : thou liest, I am not mad : 
I know thee to be Pedro, and he Jaques; 
ril prove it thee ; and were I mad, how could 1 1 
Where was she the same night, when my Horatio was murdered ! 
She should have shone then ; search thou the book : 
Had the moon shone in my boy's face, there was a kind of grace, 
That 1 know — nay, I do know, had the murderer seen him, 
His weapon would have fallen, and cut the earth, 
Had he been framed of naught but blood and death,"] &c. 

Again, in the fifth act : — 
*' HiERON. But are you sure that they are dead ! 

Castile. Ay, slain too sure. ■( 

HiERON. What, and yours too"! 

Viceroy. Ay, all are dead ; not one of them survive. 

HiERON. Nay, then I care not — come, we shall be friends; 
Let us lay our heads together. 
See, here's a goodly noose will hold them all. 



OP S. T. COLERIDGE. 75 

as in the Venus and Adonis, and Rape of Lucrece.* 
In the drama alone, as Shakspeare soon found out, 
could the sublime poet and profound philosopher find 
the conditions of a compromise. In the Love's Labour 
Lost there are many faint sketches of some of his vig- 
orous portraits in after-life — as, for example, in partic- 
idar, of Benedict and Beatrice.! 

Viceroy. O damned devil ! how secure he is! 

HiERON. Secure ! why dost thou wonder at if? 
[I tell thee, Viceroy, this day I've seen revenge. 
And in that sight am grown a prouder monarch 
Than ever sate under the crown of Spain. 
Had I as many lives as there be stars, 
As many heavens to go to as those lives, 
I'd give them all, ay, and my soul to boot, 
But I would see thee ride in this red pool. 
Methinks, since I grew inward with revenge, 
I cannot look with scorn enough on death.] 

King. What ! dost thou mock us, slave 1 Bring tortures forth. 

HiERON. [Do, do, do; and meantime I'll torture you. 
You had a son, as I take it, and your son 

Should have been married to your daughter ; ha ! was it not sol 
You had a son too, he was my liege's nephew. 
He was proud and politic — had he lived, 
He might have come to wear the crown of Spain : 
I think 'twas so — 'twas I that killed him ; 
Look you — this same hand was it that stabb'd 
His heart — do^'ou see this hand 1 
For one Horatio, if you ever knew him — 
A youth, one that they hang'd up in his father's garden — 
One that did force your valiant son to yield,"] &c. — Ed. 

* " In Shakspeare's Poems the creative power and the intellec- 
tual energy wrestle as in a war-embrace. Each in its excess of 
strength seems to threaten the extinction of the other. At length, 
in the drama, they were reconciled, and fought each with its shield 
before the breast of the other. Or like two rapid streams, that, 
at their first meeting within narrow and rocky banks, mutually 
strive to repel each other, and intermix reluctantly, and in tumult ; 
but soon finding a wider channel and more yielding shores, blend, 
and dilate, and flow on in one current, and with one voice." — Biog. 
Lit., vol. ii., p. 21. 

t Mr. Coleridge, of course, alluded to Biron and Rosaline ; 
and there are other obvious prolusions, as the scene of the mask 
with the courtiers, compared with the play in A Midsummer 
Night's Pream — Ed. 

2 



76 TABLE-TALK 

Gifford has done a great deal for the text of Mas- 
singer, but not as much as might easily be done. His 
comparison of Shakspeare with his contemporary dram- 
atists is obtuse indeed.* 



In Shakspeare one sentence begets the next natu- 
rally ; the meaning is all inwoven. He goes on kin- 
dling like a meteor through the dark atmosphere ; yet, 
when the creation in its outline is once perfect, then 
he seems to rest from his labour, and to smile upon 
his work, and tell himself that it is very good. You 
see many scenes and parts of scenes which are simply 
Shakspeare's disporting himself in joyous triumph and 
vigorous fun after a great achievement of his highest 
genius. 



The old dramatists took great liberties in respect of 
bringing parties in scene together, and representing 
one as not recognising the other under some faint dis- 
guise. Some of their finest scenes are constructed on 
this ground. Shakspeare avails himself of this artifice 
only twice, I think — in Twelfth Night, where the two 
are with great skill kept apart till the end of the play, 
and in the Comedy of Errors, which is a pure farce, 
and should be so considered. The definition of a farce 
is, an improbability, or even impossibility, granted in 
the outset: see what odd and laughable events will 
fairly follow from it. 

* See his Introduction to Massinger, vol. i., p. 79, in which, 
among other most extraordinary assertions, Mr. Gifford pro 
nounces that rhjthmical modulation is not one of Shakspeare^ $ 
merits ! The whole of the passage to which I allude seems to 
me to be the grossest miscarriage to be found in the writings of 
this distinguished critic. It is as bad as any thing in Seward, 
Simpson, & Co. — Ed. 



OP S. T. COLERIDGE. 77 

A.PRIL 8, 1833. 

Statesmen — Burke. 

I NEVER was much subject to violent political hu- 
mours or accesses of feelings. When I was very young 
I wrote and spoke very enthusiastically ; but it was 
always on subjects connected with some grand general 
principle, the violation of which I thought I could point 
out. As to mere details of administration, I honestly 
thought that ministers, and men in office, must, of 
course, know much better than any private person 
could possibly do ; and it was not till I went to Malta, 
and had to correspond with official characters myself, 
that I fully understood the extreme shallowness and 
ignorance with which men, of some note too, were 
able, after a certain fashion, to carry on the govern- 
ment of important departments of the empire. I then 
quite assented to Oxenstiern's saying, Nescis, mi fili, 
quam parva sapientia regitur mundus. 



Burke was, indeed, a great man. No one ever read 
history so philosophically as he seems to have done. 
Yet, until he could associate his general principles 
with some sordid interest, panic of property. Jacobinism, 
&c., he was a mere dinner-bell. Hence you will find 
so many half-truths in- his speeches and writings. 
Nevertheless, let us heartily acknowledge his trans- 
cendent greatness. He would have been more influen- 
tial if he had less surpassed his contemporaries, as Fox 
and Pitt, men of much inferior minds, in all respects. 



April 9, 1833 

Prospect of Monarchy or Democracy — The Reformed 
House of Commons, 

I HAVE a deep, though paradoxical conviction, that 

most of the European nations are more or less on their 

way, unconsciously indeed, to pure monarchy ; that is, 

to a government in which, under circumstances of com- 

7* 



1 



78 TABLE-TALK 

plicated and subtle control, the reason of the people 
shall become efficient in the apparent will of the king.* 
As it seems to me, the wise and good in every country 
will, in all likelihood, become every day more and more 
disgusted with the representative form of government, 
brutalized as it is, and will be, by the predominance 
of democracy in England, France, and Belgium. The 
statesmen of antiquity, we know, doubted the possibility 
of the effective and permanent combination of the three 
elementary forms of government ; and, perhaps, they 
had more reason than we have been accustomed to think. 



You see how this House of Commons has begun to 
verify all the ill prophecies that were made of it — low, 
vulgar, meddling with every thing, assuming universal 
competency, flattering every base passion, and sneering 
at every thing noble, refined, and truly national ! The 
direct and personal despotism will come on by-and-by, 
after the multitude shall have been gratified with the 
ruin and ihe spoil of the old institutions of the land. As 
for the House of Lords, what is the use of ever so much 
fiery spirit, if there be no principle to guide and to 
sanctify it ? 



April 10, 1833. 

United States of America — Captain B. Hall — Northern 
and Southern States — Democracy with Slavery- — 
Quakers. 

The possible destiny of the United States of America 
— as a nation of a hundred millions of freemen — stretch- 
ing from the Atlantic to the Pacific, living under the 
laws of Alfred, and speaking the language of Shak- 
speare and Milton, is an august conception. Why 
should we not wish to see it realized ? America 
would then be England viewed through a solar micro- 

* This is backing Vico against Spinosa. It must, however, 
be acknowledged, that at present the prophet of democracy has a 
good rirrht to be considered the favourite. — En. 



I 



OF S. T. COLERIDGE, . 79 

scope ; Great Britain in a state of glorious magnifica- 
tion ! How deeply to be lamented is the spirit of 
hostility and sneering which some of the popular books 
of travels have shown in treating of the Americans 1 
They hate us, no doubt, just as brothers hate ; but they 
respect the opinion of an Englishman concerning them- 
selves ten times as much as that of a native of any 
other country on earth. A very little humouring of 
their prejudices, and some courtesy of language and 
demeanour, on the part of Englishmen, would work 
wonders, even as it is, with the public mind of the 
Americans. 



Captain Basil Hall's book is certainly very enter- 
taining and instructive ; but, in my judgment, his sen- 
timents upon many points, and more especially his 
mode of expression, are unwise and uncharitable. 
After all, are not most of the things shown up with so 
much bitterness by him mere national foibles, parallels 
to which every people has, and must of necessity have ? 



What you say about the quarrel in the United States 
is sophistical. No doubt taxation may, and perhaps 
in some cases must, press unequally, or apparently so, 
on different classes of people in a state. In such cases 
there is a hardship ; but, iii the long run, the matter is 
fully compensated to the over-taxed class. For ex- 
ample, take the householders in London, who complain 
so bitterly of the house and window-taxes. Is it not 
pretty clear that, whether such householder be a trades- 
man, who indemnifies himself in the price of his goods 
— or a letter of lodgings, who does so in his rent — or 
a stockholder, who receives it back again in his divi- 
dends — or a country gentleman, who has saved so much 
fresh levy on his land or his other property — one way 
or other, it comes at last pretty nearly to the same 
thing, though the pressure for the time may be unjust 
and vexatious, and fit to be removed ? But when New- 
England, which may be considered a state in itself, 



% 



so TABLE-TALK 

taxes the admission of foreign manufactures, in order 
to cherish manufactures of its own, and thereby forces 
the Carohnians, another state of itself, with which 
there is little intercommunion, which has no such desire 
or interest to serve, to buy worse articles at a higher 
price, it is altogether a different question ; and is, in 
fact, downright tyranny of the worst, because of the 
most sordid kind. What would you think of a law 
which should tax every person in Devonshire for the ^ 
pecuniary benefit of every person in Yorkshire 1 And 
yet that is a feeble image of the actual usurpation of 
the New-England deputies over the property of the 
Southern States. 



There are two possible modes of unity in a state ; 
one by absolute co-ordination of each to all, and of all 
to each ; the other by subordination of classes and of- 
fices. Now, I maintain that there never was an in- 
stance of the first, nor can there be, without slavery 
as its condition and accompaniment, as in Athens. 
The poor Swiss cantons are no exception. 

The mistake lies in confounding a state, which must 
be based on classes, and interests, and unequal property, 
with a church, which is founded on the person, and has 
no qualification but personal merit. Such a commu- 
nity may exist, as in the case of the Quakers ; but, in or- 
der to exist, it must be compressed and hedged in by 
another society, — mundus mundulus in mvndo immundo. 



The free class in a slave state is always, in one 
sense, the most patriotic class of people in an empire ; 
for their patriotism is not simply the patriotism of 
other people, but an aggregate of lust of power, and 
distinction, and supremacy. 



April 11, 1833. 
Land and Money, 
Land was the only species of property which, in the 
old time, carried any respectability with it. Money 



"'*'S« 



OF S. T. COLERIDGE. 81 

alone, apart from some tenure of land, not only did not 
make the possessor great and respectable, but actually 
made him at once the object of plunder and hatred. 
Witness the history of the Jews in this country in the 
early reigns after the Conquest. 



I have no objection to your aspiring to the political 
principles of our old Cavaliers ; but embrace them all 
fully, and not merely this and that feeling, while in 
other points you speak the canting foppery of the Ben- 
thamite or Malthusian schools. 



April 14, 1833. 

Methods of Investigation. 

There are three ways of treating a subject : — 
In the first mode you begin with a definition, and 
that definition is necessarily assumed as the truth. As 
the argument proceeds, the conclusion from the first 
proposition becomes the base of the second, and so on. 
Now, it is quite impossible that you can be sure that 
you have included all the necessary, and none but the 
necessary, terms in your definition ; as, therefore, you 
proceed, the original speck of error is multiplied at 
every remove ; the same infirmity of knowledge be- 
setting each successive definition. Hence you may 
set out, like Spinosa, with all but the truth, and end 
with a conclusion which is altogether monstrous ; and 
yet the mere deduction shall be irrefragable. War- 
burton's " Divine Legation" is also a splendid instance 
of this mode of discussion, and of its inability to lead 
to the truth : in fact, it is an attempt to adopt the 
mathematical series of proof, in forgetfulness that the 
mathematician is sure of the truth of his definition at 
each remove, because he creates it, as he can do, in 
pure figure and number. But you cannot make any 
thing true which results from, or is connected with, 
real externals ; you can only find it out. The chief 
D3 



82 TABLE-TALK 

use of this first mode of discussion is to sharpen the 
wit, for which purpose it is the best exercitation. 

2. The historical mode is a very common one : in it 
the author professes to find out the truth by collecting 
the facts of the case, and tracing them downwards ; 
but this mode is worse than the other. Suppose the 
question is as to the true essence and character of the 
English constitution. First, where will you begin 
your collection of facts ? where will you end it ? What 
facts will you select, and how do you know that the 
class of facts which you select are necessary terms in 
the premises, and that other classes of facts, which 
you neglect, are not necessary 1 And how do you dis- 
tinguish phenomena which proceed from disease or ac- 
cident, from those which are the genuine fruits of the 
essence of the constitution ? What can be more stri- 
king, in illustration of the utter inadequacy of this line 
of investigation for arriving at the real truth, than the 
political treatises and constitutional histories which we 
have in every library ? A Whig proves his case con- 
vincingly to the reader who knows nothing beyond his 
author ; then comes an old Tory (Carte, for instance), 
and ferrets up a hamperful of conflicting documents 
and notices, which prove his case per contra. A. takes 
this class of facts ; B. takes that class ; each proves 
something true, neither proves the truth, or any thing 
like the truth ; that is, the whole truth. 

3. You must, therefore, commence with the philo- 
sophic idea of the thing, the true nature of which you 
wish to find out and manifest. You must carry your 
rule ready made, if you wish to measure aright. If 
you ask me how I can know that this idea — my own 
invention — is the truth, by which the phenomena of 
history are to be explained, I answer, in the same way 
exactly that you know that your eyes were made to see 
with ; and that is, because you do see with them. If 
I propose to you an idea or self-realizing theory of the 
constitution, which shall manifest itself as an exist- 
ence from the earliest times to the present, — which 
shall comprehend within it all the facts which historv 



OF S. T. COLERIDGE. 83 

has preserved, and shall give them a meaning as inter- 
' changeably causals or effects; — if I show you that 
such an event or reign was an obliquity to the right 
hand, and how produced, and such other event or reign 
a deviation to the left, and whence originating, — that 
the growth was stopped here, accelerated there, — that 
such a tendency is, and always has been, corroborative, 
and such other tendency destructive, of the main prog- 
ress of the idea towards realization ; — if this idea, not 
only like a kaleidoscope, shall reduce all the miscella- 
neous fragments into order, but shall also minister 
strength, and knowledge, and light, to the true patriot and 
statesman, for working out the bright thought, and bring- 
ing the glorious embryo to a perfect birth; — then, I think, 
I have a right to say that the idea which led to this is 
not only true, but the truth, the only truth. To set up 
for a statesman upon historical knowledge only, is 
about as wise as to set up for a musician by the purchase 
of some score flutes, fiddles, and horns. In order to 
make music, you must know how to play ; in order to 
make your facts speak truth, you must know what the 
truth is which ought to be proved,--the ideal truth, — 
the truth which was consciously or unconsciously, 
strongly or weakly, wisely or blindly, intended at all 
times.* 

* I have preserved this passage, conscious, the while, how lia- 
ble it is to be misunderstood, or at least not understood. The 
readers of Mr. Coleridge's works generally, or of his " Church 
and State" in particular, will have no difficulty in entering into 
his meaning ; namely, that no investigation in the non-mathemat- 
ical sciences can be carried on in a way deserving to be called 
philosophical, unless the investigator have in himself a mental in- 
itiative, or, what comes to the same thing, unless he set out with 
an intuition of the ultimate aim or idea of the science or aggre- 
gation of facts to be explained or interpreted. The analysis of 
the Platonic and Baconian methods in " The Friend," to which I 
have before referred, and the " Church and State," exhibit re- 
spectively a splendid vindication and example of Mr. Coleridge's 
mode of reasoning on this subject. — Ed 



84 TABLE-TALK 

April 18, 1833. 

Church of Rome — Celibacy of the Clergy. 

In my judgment, Protestants lose a great deal of 
time in a false attack, when they labour to convict the 
Romanists of false doctrines. Destroy the Papacy ^ and 
help the priests to wives, and I am much mistaken if 
the doctrinal errors, such as there really are, would not 
very soon pass away. They might remain in terminis, 
but they would lose their sting and body, and lapse 
back into figures of rhetoric and warm devotion, from 
which they, most of them, — such as transubstantiation, 
and prayers for the dead and to saints, — originally 
sprang. But so long as the Bishop of Rome remains 
Pope, and has an army of Mamelukes all over the 
world, we shall do very little by fulminating against 
mere doctrinal errors. In the Milanese, and elsewhere 
in the north of Italy, I am told there is a powerful feel- 
ing abroad against the Papacy. That district seems 
to be something in the state of England in the reign 
of our Henry the Eighth. 



How deep a wound to morals and social purity has 
that accursed article of the celibacy of the clergy been ! 
Even the best and most enlightened men in Romanist 
countries attach a notion of impurity to the marriage 
of a clergyman. And can such a feeling be without 
its effect on the estimation of the wedded life in gen- 
eral ? Impossible ! and the morals of both sexes in 
Spain, Italy, France, (fee, prove it abundantly. 

The Papal church has had three phases, — anti- 
Caesarean, extra-national, anti-christian. 



April 20, 1833. 

Roman Conquests of Italy. 
The Romans would never have subdued the Italian 
tribes if they had not boldly left Italy and conquered 



OF S. T. COLERIDGE. 85 

foreign nations ; and so, at last, crushed their next- 
door neighbours by external pressure. 



April 24, 1833. 

Wedded Love in Shakspeare and his Contemporary 
Dramatists — Tennyson's Poe?ns. 

Except in Shakspeare, you can find no such thing 
as a pure conception of wedded love in our old dram- 
atists. In Massinger, and Beaumont and Fletcher, it 
really is on both sides little better than sheer animal 
desire. There is scarcely a suiter in all their plays, 
whose abilities are not discussed by the lady or her 
waiting-women. In this, as in all things, how trans- 
cendent over his age and his rivals was our sweet 
Shakspeare ! 



I have not read through all Mr. Tennyson's poems, 
which have been sent to me ; but I think there are 
some things of a good deal of beauty in what I have 
seen- The misfortune is, that he has begun to write 
verses without very well understanding what metre is. 
Even if you write in a known and approved metre, the 
odds are, if you are not a metrist yourself, that you 
will not write harmonious verses ; but to deal in new 
metres without considering what metre means and re- 
quires, is preposterous. What 1 would, with many 
wishes for success, prescribe to Tennyson, — indeed, 
without it he can never be a poet in act, — is to write 
for the next two or three years in none but one or two 
well-known and strictly defined metres, such as the 
heroic couplet, the octave stanza, or the octo-syllabic 
measure of the Allegro and Penseroso. He would, 
probably, thus get imbued with a sensation, if not a 
sense, of metre, without knowing it, just as Eton boys 
get to write such good Latin verses by conning Ovid 
and TibuUus. As it is, I can scarcely scan his verses. 
8 



SB TABLE-TALE M 

May 1, 1833. ^ 

I THiPfK with some interest upon the fact that RaSe-' 
feis and Luther were born in the same year.* Glori- 
ous spirits ! glorious spirits ! 

" Hos utinam inter 

Heroas natum me !" 

" Great wits are sure to madness near allied," 

says Dryden, and true so far as this, that genius of the 
highest kind implies an unusual intensity of the modi^ 
fying power, which, detached from the discriminative 
and reproductive power, might conjure a platted straw 
into a royal diadem : but it would be at least as true, 
that great genius is most alien from madness, — yea-, 
divided from it by an impassable mountain, — namely, 
the activity of thought aad vivacity of the accumula- 
tive memory, which are no less essential constituents 
©f " great wit." 



May 4, 1833^. 

Colonization — Machinery — Capital 

Colonization is not only a manifest expedient, buS 
an imperative duty on Great Britain. God seems to 
hold out his finger to us over the sea. But it must be 
a national colonization,, such as was that of the Scotch 
to America ; a colonization of Hope, and not such as 
we have alone encouraged and effected for the last fifty 
years — a colonization of Despair. 



The wonderful powerS' of machinery can, by multi- 
plied production, render the mere arte facta of life 
actually cheaper : thus, money and all other things 
being supposed the same in value, a silk gown is five 
times cheaper now thaii in Queen Elizabeth's time ; 

* Tliey were born within twelve months of each other, I be- 
fieve ; but Luther's birth was in November, 1484, and that of Ra- 
belais is generally placed at the end of the year preceding. — E-i> ■ 



I 



OF S. T. COLlJRiDGE. 87 

Inrt machinery cannot cheapen, in any thing like an 
equal degree, the immediate growths of nature or the 
immediate necessaries of man. Now the arte facta 
are sought by the higher classes of society in a pro- 
portion incalculably beyond that in which they are 
sought by the lower classes ; and therefore it is that 
the vast increase of mechanical powers has not cheap- 
ened life and pleasure to the poor as it has done to 
the rich. In some respects, no doubt, it has done so, 
as in giving cotton dresses to maid-servants, and penny 
^in to all. A pretty benefit truly ! 



I think this countiy is now suffering grievously 
under an excessive accumulation of capital, which, 
having no held for profitable operation, is in a state of' 
iierce civil war with itself. 



May 6, 1833. 

Roman Conquest — Constantine — Papacy and the 
Schoolmen. 

The Romans had no national clerisy ; their priest- 
hood was entirely a matter of state, and, as far back as 
we can trace it, an evident stronghold of the Patricians 
against the increasing powers of the Plebeians. All 
we know of the early Romans is, that after an indefi- 
nite lapse of years, they had conquered some fifty or 
sixty miles round their city. Then it is that they go 
to war with Carthage, the great maritime power, and 
the result of that war was the occupation of Sicily. 
Thence they, in succession, conquered Spain, Mace- 
donia, Asia Minor, &,c., and so at last contrived to 
subjugate Italy, partly by a tremendous back blow, and 
partly by bribing the Italian States with a communica- 
tion of their privileges, which the now enormously en- 
riched conquerors possessed over so large a portion 
of the civilized world. They were ordained by Provi- 
dence to conquer and amalgamate the materials of 



88 TABLE-TALK 

Christendom. They were not a national people ; they 
were truly — 

Romanos rerum dominos — 
— and that's all. 



Under Constantine, the spiritual power became a 
complete reflex of the temporal. There were four pa- 
triarchs, and four prefects, and so on. The Clergy 
and the Lawyers, the Church and the State, were op- 
posed. 



The beneficial influence of the Papacy upon the 
whole has been much over-rated by some writers ; 
and certainly no country in Europe received less bene- 
fit and more harm from it than England. In fact, the 
lawful kings and parliaments of England were always 
essentially Protestant in feeling for a national church, 
though they adhered to the received doctrines of the 
Christianity of the day ; and it was only the usurpers, 
John, Henry IV., &c., that went against this policy. 
All the great English schoolmen, Scotus Erigena,* 
Duns Scotus, Ockham, and others, those morning stars 
of the Reformation, were heart and soul opposed to 
Rome, and maintained the Papacy to be Antichrist. 
The Popes always persecuted, with rancorous hatred, 
the national clerisies, the married clergy, and disliked 
the universities which grew out of the old monasteries. 
The Papacy was, and is, essentially extra-national, 
and was always so considered in this country, although 
not believed to be anti-christian. 

* John Scotus, or Erigena, was born, according to different au- 
thors, in Wales, Scotland, or Ireland ; but I do not find any 
account making him an Englishman of Saxon blood. His death 
is uncertainly placed in the beginning of the ninth century. He 
lived in well-known intimacy with Charles the Bald, of France, 
and died about a. d. 874. He resolutely resisted the doctrine of 
transubstantiation, and was pubhcly accused of heresy on that ac- 
count. But the King of France protected him.— Ed. 



,^.,^5 V OF S. T. COLERIDGE. 89 

May 8, 1833. 

Civil War of the Seventeenth Century — Hamp- 
den's Speech. 
I KNOW no portion of history which a man might 
write with so much pleasure as that of the great strug- 
gle in the time of Charles I., because he may feel the 
profoundest respect for both parties. The side taken 
by any particular person was determined by the 
point of view which such person happened to com- 
mand at the commencement of the inevitable collision, 
one line seeming straight to this man, another line to 
another. No man of that age saw the truth, the whole 
truth ; there was not light enough for that. The con- 
sequence, of course, was a violent exaggeration of each 
party for the time. The King became a martyr, and 
the Parliamentariants traitors, and vice versd. The 
great reform brought into act by and under William the 
Third combined the principles truly contended for by 
Charles and his Parliament respectively : the great 
revolution of 1831 has certainly, to an almost ruinous 
degree, dislocated those principles of government again. 
As to Hampden's speech,* no doubt it means a declara- 
tion of passive obedience to the sovereign, as the creed 
of an English Protestant individual : every man, Crom- 
well and all, would have said as much ; it was the an- 
ti-papistical tenet, and almost vauntingly asserted on all 

* On his impeachment with the other four members, 1642, 
See the " Letter to John Murray, Esq. touching Lord Nugent," 
1833. It is extraordinary that Lord N. should not see the plain 
distinction taken by Hampden, between not obeying an unlawful 
command, and rebelling against the King because of it. He ap- 
proves the one, and condemns the other. His words are, " to 
yield obedience to the commands of a King, if against the true reli- 
gion, against the ancient and fundamental laws of the land, is an- 
other sign of an ill subject : — ^^To resist the lawful power of the 
King -, to raise insurrection against the King ; admit him adverse 
ill his religion ; to conspire against his sucred perso7h, or any 
ways to rebel, though commanding things against our consciences 
in exercising religion, or against the rights and privileges of the 
subject, is an absolute sign of the disaffected and traitorous sul?- 
ject,"— Ek, 



^0 TABLE-TALK 

occasions by Protestants up to that time. But it im- 
plies nothing of Hampden's creed as to the duty of Par- 
liament. 



May 10, 1833. 

Reformed House of Commons. 

Well, I think no honest man will deny that the 
prophetic denunciations of those who seriously and sol- 
emnly opposed the Reform Bill are in a fair way of 
exact fultilment ! For myself, I own I did not expect 
such rapidity of movement. I supposed that the first 
parliament would contain a large number of low fac- 
tious men, who would vulgarize and degrade the de- 
bates of the House of Commons, and considerably im- 
pede public business ; and that the majority would be 
gentlemen more foad of their property than their poli- 
tics. But really, the truth is something more than this. 
Think of upwards of 160 members voting away two 
millions and a half of tax on Friday,* at the bidding of 
whom, shall I say? and then no less than 70 of those 
very members rescinding their votes on the Tuesday 
next following, nothing whatever having intervened to 
justify the change, except that they had found out that 
at least seven or eight millions more must go also upon 
the same principle, and that the revenue was cut in 
two ! Of course I approve the vote of rescission, how- 
ever dangerous a precedent ; but what a picture of the 
composition of this House of Commons ! 

* On Friday, the 26th of April, 1833, Sir William Ingilby moved 
and carried a resolution for reducing the duty on malt from 28*. 
'^d. to 105. per quarter. One hundred and sixty-two members 
voted with him. On Tuesday followmg, the 30th of April, sev- 
enty-six members only voted against the rescission of the same 
resolution. — Ed. 



OP S. T. COLERIDGE. 91 

May 13, 1833. 

Food — Medicine — Poison — Obstruction. 

1. That which is digested wholly, and part of which 
is assimilated, and pan rejected, is — Food. 

2. That which is digested wholly, and the whole of 
which is partly assimilated, and partly not, is — Med- 
icine. 

3. That which is digested, but not assimilated, is — 
Poison. 

4. That which is neither digested nor assimilated is 
— Mere Obstruction. 

As to the stories of slow poisons, I cannot say 
whether there was any, or what, truth in them ; but I 
certandy believe a man may be poisoned by arsenic a 
year after he has taken it. In fact, I think that is 
known to have happened. 



May 14, 1833. 

Wilson — Shakspeare'' s Sonnets — Love. 

Professor Wilson's character of Charles Lamb in 
the last Blackwood, Twaddle on Tweed-side* is very 
sweet indeed, and gratified me much. It does honour 
to Wilson, to his head and his heart. 

* " Charles Lamb ought really not to abuse Scotland in the 
pleasant way he so often does in the sylvan shades of Enfield ; 
for Scotland loves Charles Lamb ; but he is wayward and wilful 
in his wisdom, and conceits that many a Cockney is a better man 
even than Christopher North. But what will not Christopher 
forgive to genius and goodness ! Even Lamb, bleating libels on 
his native land. Nay, he learns lessons of humanity even from 
the mild malice of Elia, and breathes a blessing on him and his 
household in their bower of rest." 

Some of Mr. Coleridge's poems were first published with some 
of C. Lamb's at Bristol in 1797. The remarkable words on the 
title-page have been aptly cited in the New Monthly Magazine for 
February, 1835, p. 198 : " Duplex nobis vinculum, et amicitiae et 
similium junctarumque Camoenarum — quod utinam neque mors 
solvat, neque temporis longinqwitasy And even so it came to 
pass after thirty-seven years more had passed over their heads. — 
Editor. 



92 TABLE-TALK 

How can I wish that AVilson should cease to write 
what so often sooths and suspends my bodily miseries 
and my mental conflicts ! Yet what a waste, what a 
reckless spending, of talent, ay, and of genius too, in 
his I know not how many years' management of Black- 
wood ! If Wilson cares for fame, for an enduring 
place and prominence in literature, he should now, I 
think, hold his hand, and say, as he well may, — 

" Miliiavi non sine gloria : 

Nunc arma defuncturnque bello 
Barbiton hie paries habebit." 

Two or three volumes collected out of the magazine 
by himself would be very delightful. But he must not 
leave it for others to do ; for some recasting and much 
condensation would be required ; and literary execu- 
tors make sad work in general with their testators' 
brains.* 



I believe it possible that a man may, under certain 
states of the moral feeling, entertain something de- 
serving the name of love towards a male object — an 
aflfection beyond friendship, and wholly aloof from ap- 
petite. In Elizabeth's and James's time it seems to 
have been almost fashionable to cherish such a feeling ; 
and perhaps we may account in some measure for it 
by considering how very inferior the women of that 
age, taken generally, were in education and accom- 
plishment of mind to the men. Of course there were 
brilliant exceptions enough; but the plays of Beau- 
mont and Fletcher — the most popular dramatists that 
ever wrote for the English stage — will show us what 
sort of women it was generally pleasing to represent. 
Certainly the language of the two friends, Musidorus 
and Pyrocles, in the Arcadia, is such as we could not 
now use except to women ; and in Cervantes the same 
tone is sometimes adopted, as in the novel of the Cu- 
rious Impertinent. And I think there is a passage in 

* True ; and better fortune attend Mr. Coleridge's own ! — Ed. 



OF S. T. COLERIDGE. 93 

the New Atalantis* of Lord Bacon, in which he speaks 
of the possibility of such a feeling, but hints the ex- 
treme danger of entertaining it, or allowing it any place 
in a moral theory. I mention this with reference to 
Shakspeare's sonnets, which have been supposed by 
some to be addressed to William Herbert, Earl of Pem- 
broke, whom Clarendon callsf the most beloved man 
of his age, though his licentiousness w^s equal to his 
virtues. I doubt this. I do not think that Shakspeare, 
merely because he was an actor, would have thought 
it necessary to veil his emotions towards Pembroke 
under a disguise, though he might probably have done 
so, if the real object had perchance been a Laura or a 
lieonora. It seems to me that the sonnets could only 
have come from a man deeply in love, and in love with 
a woman ; and there is one sonnet which, from its in- 
congruity, I take to be a purposed blind. These ex- 
traordinary sonnets form, in fact, a poem^ of so many 
stanzas of fourteen lines each ; and, like the passion 
which inspired them, the sonnets are always the same, 

* I cannot fix upon any passage in this work to which it can 
be supposed that Mr. Coleridge alluded, unless it be the speech 
of Joabin the Jew ; but it contains nothing coming up to the mean- 
ing in the text. The only approach to it seems to be : — " As for 
masculine love, they have no touch of it ; and yet there are not 
so faithful and inviolate friendships in the world again as are there ; 
and to speak generally, as I said before, I have not read of any 
such chastity in any people as theirs." — Ed. 

t "William Earl of Pembroke was next, a man of another 
mould and making, and of another fame and reputation with all 
men, being the most universally beloved and esteemed of any man 

of that age." " He indulged to himself the 

pleasures of all kinds, almost in all excesses." — Hist, of the Rebell- 
ion, book i. He died in 1630, aged fifty years. The dedication 
by T. T. (Thomas Thorpe) is to " the only begetter of these en- 
suing sonnets, Mr. W. H. ;" and Malone is inclined to think that 
William Hughes is meant. As to Mr. W. H. being the only be- 
getter of these sonnets, it must be observed, that at least the last 
twenty-eight are beyond dispute addressed to a woman. I sup- 
pose the twentieth sonnet was the particular one conceived by 
Mr. C. to be a blind ; but it seems to me that many others may be 
so construed, if we set out with a conviction that '.he real object 
of the poet was a woman. — Ed. 



94 TABLE-TALK 

with a variety of expression — continuous, if you re- 
gard the lover's soul — distinct, if you listen to him as 
he heaves them, sigh after sigh. 

These sonnets, like the Venus and Adonis, and the 
Rape of Lucrece, are characterized by boundless fer- 
tility and laboured condensation of thought, with per- 
fection of sweetness in rhythm and metre. These are 
the essentials in the budding of a great poet. After- 
ward, habit and consciousness of power teach more 
ease — prcscipitandum liberum spiritum. 



Every one who has been in love, knows that the 
passion is strongest, and the appetite weakest, in the 
absence of the beloved object, and that the reverse is 
the case in her presence. 



May 15, 1833. 

Wicliffe — Luther — Reverence for Ideal Truths — Johii- 
son the Whig — Asgill — James I, 

Wicliffe's genius was, perhaps, not equal to Lu- 
ther's ; but really, the more I know of him from Vaug- 
han and Le Bas, both of whose books I like, I think 
him as extraordinary a man as Luther upon the whole. 
He was much sounder and more truly catholic in his 
view of the eucharist than Luther. And I find, not 
without some pleasure, that my own view of it, which 
I was afraid was original, was maintained in the tenth 
century ; that is to say, that the body broken has no 
reference to the human body of Christ, but to the Caro 
Noumenon, or symbolical Body, the Rock that followed 
the Israelites. 

There is now no reverence for any thing ; and the 
reason is, that men possess conceptions only, and all 
their knowledge is conceptional only. Now, as to 
conceive is a work of the mere understanding, and as 
all that can be conceived may be comprehended, it is 
impossible that a man shoidd reverence that, to which 



OF g. T. COLERIDGE. 95 

he must always feel something in himself superior. 
If it were possible to conceive God in a strict sense, 
that is, as we conceive a horse or a tree, even God 
himself could not excite any reverence, though he 
might excite fear or terror, or perhaps love, as a tiger 
or a beautiful woman. But reverence, which is the 
synthesis of love and fear, is only due from man, and, 
indeed, only excitable in man, towards ideal truths, 
which are always mysteries to the understanding, for the 
same reason that the motion of my finger behind my 
back is a mystery to you now — your eyes not being 
made for seeing through my body. It is the reasor? 
only which has a sense by which ideas can be recog- 
nised, and from the fontal light of ideas only can a 
man draw intellectual power. 



Samuel Johnson,* whom, to distinguish him from 
the Doctor, we may call the Whig, was a very remark- 
able writer. He may be compared to his contempo- 
rary De Foe, whom he resembled in many points. He 
is another instance of King William's discrimination, 
which was so much superior to that of any of his min- 
isters. Johnson was one of the most formidable ad- 
vocates for the Exclusion Bill, and he suffered by 
whipping and imprisonment under James accordingly. 
Like Asgill, he argues with great apparent candour 
and clearness till he has his opponent within reach^ 
and then comes a blow as from a sledge-hammer, I 
do not know where I could put my hand upon a book 
containing so much sense and sound constitutional 
doctrine as this thin folio of Johnson's Works ; and 

* Dryden's Ben Jochanan, in the second part of Absalom and 
Achitophel. He was bom in 1649, and died in 1703. He was 
a clergyman. In 1686, when the army was encamped on Houns- 
low Heath, he published " A humble and hearty Address to all 
English Protestants in the present iVrmy." For this he was tried, 
and sentenced to be pilloried in three places, pay a fine, and be 
■whipped from Newgate to Tyburn. An attempt was also made 
to degrade him from his orders, but this failed through an infer- 
mahty. After the Revolution he was preferred. — Ed, 



96 TABLE-TALK 

what party in this country" would read so severe a lec- 
ture in it as our modern Whigs ? 

A close reasoner and a good writer in general may 
be known by his pertment use of connectives. Read 
that page of Johnson ; you cannot alter one conjunc- 
tion without spoiling the sense, it is a linked strain 
throughout. In your modern books, for the most part, 
the sentences in a page have the same connexion with 
each other that marbles have in a bag; they touch 
without adhering. 

Asgill evidently formed his style upon Johnson's, but 
he only imitates one part of it. Asgill never rises to 
Johnson's eloquence. The latter was a sort of Cob- 
bett-Burke. 



James the First thought that, because all power in 
the state seemed to proceed /rom the crown, all power 
therefore remained in the crown ; — as if, because the 
tree sprang from the seed, the stem, branches, leaves, 
and fruit, were all contained in the seed. The consti- 
tutional doctrine as to the relation which the king bears 
to the other components of the state is in two words 
this : — He is the representative of the whole of that, 
of which he is himself a part. 



May 17, 1833. 

Sir P. Sidney — Things are Finding their Level. 

When Sir Philip Sidney saw the enthusiasm which 
agitated every man, woman, and child in the Nether- 
lands against Philip and D'Alva, he told Queen Eliza- 
beth that it was the Spirit of God, and that it was in- 
vincible. What is the spirit which seems to move and 
unsettle every other man in England and on the Con- 
tinent at this time ? Upon my conscience, and judg- 
ing by St. John's rule, I think it is a special spirit of 
the devil — and a very vulgar devil too ! 



Your modern political economists say that it is a 



M 



OF S. T. COLERIDGE. 97 

principle in their science — that all things find their 
level ; — which I deny ; and say, on the contrary, that 
the true principle is, that ail things are finding their 
level — like water in a storm. 



May 18, 1833. 

German — Goethe — God^s Providence — Man's Freedom. 

German is inferior to English in modifications of 
expression of the affections, but superior to it in modi- 
fications of expression of all objects of the senses. 



Goethe's small lyrics are delightful. He showed 
good taste in not attempting to imitate Shakspeare's 
Witches, which are threefold, — Fates, Furies, and 
earthly Hags o' the caldron. 



Man does not move in cycles, though nature does. 
Man's course is like that of an arrow ; for the portion 
of the great cometary ellipse which he occupies is no 
more than a needle's length to a mile. 



In natural history, God's freedom is shown in the law 
of necessity. In moral history, God's necessity or 
providence is shown in man's freedom. 



June 8, 1833. 

Don Miguel and Don Pedro — Working to Better 
One^s Condition — Negro Emancipation — Fox and 
Pitt — Revolution. 

There can be no doubt of the gross violations of 
strict neurality by this government in the Portuguese 
affair ; but I wish the Tories had left the matter alone, 
and not given room to the people to associate them 
with that scovmdrel Don Miguel. You can never in- 
terest the common herd in the abstract question ; with 
them, it is a mere quarrel between the men ; and though 
. VoL.II.-E 



98 TABLE-TALK 

Pedro is a very doubtful character, he is not so bad as 
his brother ; and, besides, we are naturally interested 
for the girl. 

It is very strange that men who make light of the 
direct doctrines of the Scriptures, and turn up their 
noses at the recommendation of a line of conduct sug- 
gested by religious truth, will nevertheless stake the 
tranquillity of an empire, the lives and properties of 
millions of men and women, on the faith of a maxim 
of modern political economy ! And this, too, of a 
maxim true only, if at all, of England, or a part of 
England, or some oiher country ; — namely, that the de- 
sire of bettering their condition will induce men to 
labour even more abundantly and profitably than servile 
compulsion, — to which maxim the past history and 
present state of all Asia and Africa give the lie. Nay, 
even in England at this day, every man in Manchester, 
Birmingham, and in other great manufacturing towns, 
knows that the most skilful artisans, who may earn 
high wages at pleasure, are constantly in the habit of 
working but a few days in the week, and of idling the 
rest. I believe St. Monday is very well kept by the 
workmen in London. I think, tailors will not work at 
all on that day ; the printers, as I have heard, not till 
the afternoon ; and so on. The love of indolence is 
universal, or next to it. 



Must not the ministerial plan for the West Indies 
lead necessarily to a change of property, either by force 
or dereliction ? I can't see any way of escaping it. 



You are always talking of the rights of the negroes. 
As a rhetorical mode of stimulating the people of Eng- 
land here, I do not object ; but I utterly condemn your 
frantic practice of declaiming about their rights to the 
blacks themselves. They ought to be forcibly remind- 
ed of the state in which their brethren in Africa still 
are, and taught to be thankful for the providence which 
has placed them within the reach of the means of giacer 



OF S. T. COLERIDGE. 99 

I know no right except such as flows from righteous- 
ness ; and as every Christian believes his righteous- 
ness to be imputed, so must his right be an imputed 
right too. It must flow out of a duty, and it is under 
that name that the process of humanization ought to 
begin and to be conducted throughout. 



Thirty years ago, and more, Pitt availed himself, 
with great political dexterity, of the apprehension 
which Burke and the conduct of some of the clubs in 
London had excited, and endeavoured to inspire into 
the nation a panic of property. Fox, instead of ex- 
posing the absurdity of this by showing the real num- 
bers and contemptible weakness of the disafljected, fell 
into Pitt's trap, and was mad enough to exaggerate 
even Pitt's surmises. The consequence was, a very 
general apprehension throughout the country of an im- 
pending revolution, at a time when, I will venture to 
say, the people were more heart-whole than they had 
been for a hundred years previously. After I had 
travelled in Sicily and Italy, countries where there 
were real grounds for fear, I became deeply impressed 
with the diflerence. Now, after a long continuance 
of high national glory and influence, when a revolution 
of a most searching and general character is actually 
at work, and the old institutions of the country are all 
awaiting their certain destruction or violent modifica- 
tion — the people at large are perfectly secure, sleeping 
or gambolling on the very brink of a volcano 



June 15, 1833. 

Virtue and Liberty — Epistle to the Romans — Erasmus 

— Luther. 

The necessity for external government to man is in 

an inverse ratio to the vigour of his self-government. 

Where the last is most complete, the first is least 

wanted. Hence, the more virtue the more liberty. 

E2 



100 TABLE-TALK 

I think St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans the most 
profound work in existence ; and I hardly believe that 
the writings of the old Stoics, now lost, could have 
been deeper. Undoubtedly it is, and must be, very 
obscure to ordinary readers ; but some of the difficulty 
is accidental, arising from the form in which the 
Epistle appears. If we could now arrange this work 
in the way in which we may be sure St. Paul would 
himself do, were he now alive, and preparing it for the 
press, his reasoning would stand out clearer. His ac- 
cumulated parentheses ^^K)uld be thrown into notes, or 
extruded to the margin. You will smile, after this, if 
I say that I think I understand St. Paul ; and I think 
so, because, really and truly, I recognise a cogent con- 
secutiveness in the argument — the only evidence I 
know that you understand any book. How different is 
the style of this intensely passionate argument from 
that of the catholic circular charge called the Epistle 
to the Ephesians ! — and how different that of both from 
the style of the Epistles to Timothy and Titus, which 

I venture to call fV«rroA«i ITayAof^^e??. 



Erasmus's paraphrase of the New Testament is 
clear and explanatory ; but you cannot expect any 
thing very deep from Erasmus. The only fit com- 
mentator on Paul was Luther — not by any means such 
a gentleman as the Apostle, but almost as great a 
genius. 



June 17, 1833. 

Negro Emancipation. 

Have you been able to discover any principle in this 
Emancipation Bill for the Slaves, except a principle 
of fear of the abolition party struggling with a fear of 
causing some monstrous calamity to the empire at 
large ! Well ! I will not prophesy ; and God grant 
that this tremendous and unprecedented act of positive 
enactment may not do the harm to the cause of hu- 



OF S. T. COLERIDGE. 101 

manity and freedom which I cannot but fear! But 
yet, what can be hoped, when all human wisdom and 
counsel are set at naught, and religious faith — the only 
miraculous agent among men — is not invoked or re- 
garded ! and that most unblessed phrase — the Dissent- 
ing interest. — enters into the question ! 



June 22, 1833. 

Hacket''s Life of Archbishop Williams — Charles I. — 
Manners vnder Edward III., Richard II., and 
Henry VIII. 

What a delightful and instructive book Bishop 
Racket's Life of Archbishop Williams is ! You learn 
more from it of that which is valuable towards an in- 
sight into the times preceding the Civil War, than from 
all the ponderous histories and memoirs now composed 
about that period. 



Charles seems to have been a very disagreeable 
personage during James's life. There is nothing du- 
tiful in his demeanour. 



I think the spirit of the court and nobility of Edward 
III. and Richard II. was less gross than that in the time 
of Henry VIII. ; for in this latter period the chivalry 
had evaporated, and the whole coarseness was left by 
itself. Chaucer represents a very high and romantic 
style of society among the gentry. 



June 29, 1833. 

Hypothesis — Suffiction — Theory — LyelVs Geology — 
Gothic Architecture — Gerard Douw''s " ISchoolmas- 
ter"*^ and Titian'' s Venus — Sir J. Scarlett, 

It seems to me a great delusion to call or suppose 
the imagination of a subtile fluid, or molecules penetra* 



102 TABLE-TALK 

ble ^vitll the same, a legitimate hypothesis. It is a 
mere sufiction. Newton took the fact of bodies falling 
to the centre, and upon that built up a legitimate hy- 
pothesis. It was a supposition of something certain. 
But Descartes's vortices were not an hypothesis ; they 
rested on no fact at all ; and yet they did, in a clumsy 
way, explain the motions of the heavenly bodies. But 
your subtile fluid is pure gratuitous assumption ; and 
for what use ''. It explains nothing. 

Besides, you are endeavouring to deduce power from 
mass, in which you expressly say there is no power 
but the vis inertim : whereas, the whole analogy of 
chymistry proves that power produces mass. 

The use of a theory in the real sciences is to help 
the investigator to a complete view of all the hitherto 
discovered facts relating to the science in question ; it 
is a collected view, ^iwplx, of all he yet knows, in one. 
Of course, while any pertinent facts remain unknown, 
no theory can be exactly true ; because every new fact 
must necessarily, to a greater or less degree, displace 
the relation of all the others. A theory, therefore, 
only helps investigation ; it cannot invent or discover. 
The only true theories are those of geometry, because 
in geometry all the premises are true and unalterable. 
But, to suppose that, in our present exceedingly im- 
perfect acquaintance with the facts, any theory in 
chymistry or geology is altogether accurate, is absurd : 
— it cannot be true. 

Mr. Lyell's system of geology is just half the truth, 
and no more. He affirms a great deal that is true, and 
he denies a great deal which is equally true ; which Is 
the general characteristic of all systems not embracing 
the whole truth. So it is with the rectilinearity or un- 
dulatory motion of light ; — I believe both ; though phi- 
losophy has as yei but imperfectly ascertained the 
conditions of their alternate existence, or the laws by 
which they are regulated. 



Those who deny light to be matter, do not therefore 
deny its corporeity. 



OF S. T. COLERIDGE. 103 

The principle of the Gothic architecture is Infinity- 
made imaginable. It is no doubt a sublimer effort of 
genius than the Greek style ; but then it depends 
much more on execution for its effect. I was more 
than ever impressed with the marvellous sublimity and 
transcendent beauty of King's College Chapel.* It is 
quite unparalleled. 

* Mr. Coleridge visited Cambridge upon the occasion of the 
scientific meeting there in June, 1833. " My emotions," he said, 
" at revisiting the university, were at first overwhelming. I 
could not speak for an hour ; yet my feelings were upon the 
whole very pleasurable, and I have not passed, of late years at 
least, three days of such great enjoyment and healthful excite- 
ment of mind and body. The bed on which I slept — and slept 
soundly too — was, as near as I can describe it, a couple of sacks 
full of potatoes tied together. I understand the young men think 
it hardens them. Truly, I lay down at night a man, and rose in 
the morning a bruise." He told me "that the men were much 
amused at his saying that the fine old Quaker philosopher Dal- 
ton's face was like All Souls' College." The two persons of 
whom he spoke with the greatest interest were Mr. Faraday and 
Mr. Thirlwall, saying of the former, " that he seemed to have the 
true temperament of genius, that carrying-on of the spring and 
freshness of youthful, nay, boyish feelnigs, into the matured 
strength of manhood !" For, as Mr. Coleridge had long before 
expressed the same thought, — " To find no contradiction in the 
union of old and new ; to contemplate the Ancient of Days and 
all his works with feelings as fresh as if all had then sprung forth 
at the first creative fiat ; this characterizes the mind that feels the 
riddle of the world, and may help to unravel it. To carry on the 
feelings of childhood into the powers of manhood ; to combine the 
child's sense of wonder and novelty with the appearances which 
every day for perhaps forty years had rendered familiar ; 

" ' With sun, and moon, and stars, throughout the year, 
And man and woman ;' — 

this is the character and privilege of genius, and one of the marks 
which distinguish genius from talent. And therefore is it the 
prime merit of genius, and its most unequivocal mode of man- 
ifestation, so to represent familiar objects as to awaken in the 
minds of others a kindred feeling concerning them, and that 
freshness of sensation which is the constant accompaniment of 
mental, no less than of bodily, convalescence. Who has not a 
thousand times seen snow fall on water 1 Who has not watched 
it with a new feeling, from the time that he has read Burns's com- 
parison of sensual pleasure 



104 TABLE-TALK 

I think Gerard Douw's " Schoolmaster," in the Fitz- 
william Museum, the finest thing of that sort I ever 
saw ; — whether you look at it at the common distance, 
or examine it with a glass, the wonder is equal. And 
that glorious picture of the Venus — so perfectly beau- 
tiful and perfectly innocent — as if beauty and in- 
nocence could not be dissociated ! The French thing 
below is a curious instance of the inherent grossness 
of the French taste.* Titian's picture is made quite 
bestial. 



I think Sir James Scarlett's speech for the defend- 
ant, in the late action of Cobbett v. The Times, for a 
libel, worthy of the best ages of Greece or Rome ; 
though, to be sure, some of his remarks could not have 
been very palatable to his clients. 



I am glad you came in to punctuate my discourse, 
which I fear has gone on for an hour without any stop 
at all. 



July 1, 1833. 

MandevUle' s Fable of the Bees — Bestial Theory — Char- 
acter of Bertram — Beaumont and Fletcher^s Dramas 
— jFlschylus^ Sophocles, Euripides — Milton. 

If I could ever believe that Mandeville really meant 
any thing more by his Fable of the Bees than a bonne 
bouche of solemn raillery, I should like to ask those 
man-shaped apes who have taken up his suggestions 
in earnest, and seriously maintained them as bases for 
a rational account of man and the world — how they ex- 

*' * To snow that falls upon a river, 

A moment white — then gone for ever!' " 

Biog. Lit. vol. i., p. 85. — Ed. 
' * I wish this criticism were enough to banish that vile minia- 
ture into a drawer or cupboard. At any rate, it might be detached 
from the glorious masterpiece to which it is now a libellous pend- 
ent. — Ed. 



OF S. T. COLfiRIDGE. 105 

plain the very existence of those dexterous cheats, 
those superior charlatans, the legislators and phi- 
losophers, who have known how to play so well upon 
the peacock-like vanity and follies of their fellow- 
mortals. 

By-the-by, I wonder some of you lawyers {sub rosa, 
of course) have not quoted the pithy lines in Man- 
deville upon this Registration question : — • 

" The lawyers, of whose art the basis 
Was raising feuds and spHtting cases, 
Opposed all Registers, that cheats 
Might make more work with dipt estates ; 
As 'twere unlawful that one's own 
Without a lawsuit should be known ! 
They put oif hearings wilfully. 
To finger the refreshing fee ; 
And to defend a wicked cause 
Examined and survey'd the laws, 
As burglars shops and houses do. 
To see where best they may break through." 

There is great Hudibrastic vigour in these lines ; 
and those on the doctors are also very terse. 



Look at that head of Cline. by Chan trey ! Is that 
forehead, that nose, those temples, and that chin, akin 
to the monkey tribe ? No, no. To a man of sen- 
sibility no argument could disprove the bestial theory 
so convincingly as a quiet contemplation of that fine 
bust. 



I cannot agree with the solemn abuse which the 
critics have poured out upon Bertram in "All's Well 
that ends Well." He was a young nobleman in feudal 
times, just bursting into manhood, with all the feelings 
of pride of birth and appetite for pleasure and liberty 
natural to such a character so circumstanced. Of 
course he had never regarded Helena otherwise than 
as a dependant in the family ; and of all that which she 
possessed of goodness, and fidelity, and courage, which 
might atone for her inferiority in other respects, Ber- 
tram was necessarily in a great measure ignorant. 
E3 



106 TABLE-TALK 

And after all, her primd facie merit was the having in- 
herited a prescription from her old father the Doctor, 
by which she cures the King, — a merit which sup- 
poses an extravagance of personal loyalty in Bertram, 
to make conclusive to him in such a matter as that of 
taking a wife. Bertram had surely good reason to 
look upon the king's forcing him to marry Helena as a 
very tyrannical act. Indeed, it must be confessed that 
her character is not very delicate, and it required all 
Shakspeare's consummate skill to interest us for her ; 
and he does this chiefly by the operation of the other 
characters, — the Countess, Lafeu, &lc. We get to like 
Helena from their praising and commending her so 
much. 



In Beaumont and Fletcher's tragedies the comic 
scenes are rarely so interfused amidst the tragic as to 
produce a unity of the tragic on the whole, without 
which the intermixture is a fault. In Shakspeare, this 
is always managed with transcendent skill. The Fool 
in Lear contributes in a very sensible manner to the 
tragic wildness of the whole drama. Beaumont and 
Fletcher's serious plays or tragedies are completely 
hybrids, — neither fish nor flesh, — upon any rules, 
Greek, Roman, or Gothic ; and yet they are very de- 
lightful notwithstanding. No doubt, they imitate the 
ease of gentlemanly conversation better than Shak- 
speare, who was unable 7iot to be too much associated 
to succeed perfectly in this. 



When I was a boy, I was fondest of iEschylus ; in 
youth and middle age I preferred Euripides; now in 
my declining years I admire Sophocles. I can now at 
length see that Sophocles is the most perfect. Yet he 
never rises to the sublime simplicity of iEschylus — 
simplicity of design, I mean — nor diffuses himself in 
the passionate outpourings of Euripides. I understand 
why the ancients called Euripides the most tragic of 
their dramatists : he evidently embraces within the 
scope of the tragic poet many passions, — love, conjugal 



OP S. T. COLERIDGE. 107 

afiection, jealousy, and so on, which Sophocles seems 
to have considered as incongruous with the ideal sta- 
tuesqueness of the tragic drama. Certainly Euripides 
was a greater poet in the abstract than Sophocles. 
His choruses may be faulty as choruses, but how 
beautiful and affecting they are as odes and songs ! I 
think the famous Ew/orxoy ^sn, in the QEdipus Colo- 
neus,* cold in comparison with many of the odes of 
Euripides, as that song of the chorus in the Hippoly- 
tus — '-'Epa^r, "E/)<wrt» and so on ; and I remember a 
choric ode in the Hecuba, which always struck me as 
exquisitely rich and finished; — I mean, where the 
chorus speaks of Troy and the night of the capture, j 

EiiTirou, ^iv£, raaSi )((i>pas 
t^ iKov TO Kpdnara yds enav'Xa, 

Tov apyTjra KoXwvdv' — k. t. X. V. 668. 

"Epwj, "E(:(ws, b KUT dj-mdriav 

ard^eis itddov, eladyojv yXvKuav 

^vy(^n ydpiv, av^ i'KiarpaTfvaei, 

H^ [IOC TTOTi aiiv kukS) faveir)!, 

fi^S' ap'pvdiios sXdois' K. T. X. V. 527. 

t I take it for granted that Mr. Coleridge alluded to the 
chorus, — 

Sw fifv, 0) narpis 'iXtaj, 
rwv dvopd^TWV i:u\ts 
OVkItI Xf^fi' Tolov 'EA- 
Xdvwv vicpoi dftcpi crt Kpiitrei, 
6opl S^, 6opi rtpaaV k. t. X. V. 899. 
Thou, then, oh, natal Troy ! no more 
The city of the unsack'd shalt be. 
So thick from dark Achaia's shore 
The cloud of war hath covered thee. 
Ah ! not again 
I tread thy plain — 
The spear — the spear hath rent thy pride ; 
The flame hath scarr'd thee deep and wide ; 
Thy coronal of towers is shorn. 
And thou most piteous art — most naked and forlorn I 

T perish'd at the noon of night ! 
When sleep had seal'd each weary eye } 
When the dance was o'er, 
And harps no more 
Rang out in choral minstrels6y, 



108 TABLE-TALK 

There is nothing very surprising in Milton's prefer- 
ence of Euripides, though so unlike himself. It is 
very common — very natural— for men to like and even 
admire an exhibition of power very different in kind 
from any thing of their own. INo jealousy arises, 
Milton preferred Ovid too, and I dare say he admired 

In the dear bower of delight 
My husband slept in joy ; 
His shield and spear 
Suspended near, 
Secure he slept : that sailor band 
Full sure he deem'd no more should stand 
Beneath the walls of Troy. 

And I too, by the taper's light. 
Which in the golden mirror's haze 
riash'd its interminable rays, 

Bound up the tresses of my hair, 

That I Love's peaceful sleep might share. 
I slept ; but, hark ! that war-shout dread, 
Which rolling through the city spread ; 
And this the cry, — " When, sons of Greece, 
When shall the lingering leaguer cease ; 
When will ye spoil Troy's watch-tower high, 
And home return 1" — I heard the cry. 

And, starting from the genial bed, 

Veiled, as a Doric maid, I fled. 

And knelt, Diana, at thy holy fane, 

A trembling suppliant — all in vain. 
They led me to the sounding shore — 

Heavens ! as I passed the crowded way 

My bleeding lord before me lay — 
I saw — I saw — and wept no more. 
Till, as the homeward breezes bore 
The bark returning o'er the sea, 
My gaze, oh Ilion, turn'd on thee ! 
Then, frantic, to the midnight air, 
I cursed aloud the adulterous pair : — 
"They plunge me deep in exile's wo ; 
They lay my country low : 

Their love — no love ! but some dark spell, 

In vengeance breath'd, my spirit fell. 
Rise, hoary sea, in awful tide, 
And whelm that vessel's guilty pride ; 
Nor e'er, in high Mycene's hall, 
Let Helen boast in peace of mighty Ilion's fall." 

J. T. C— Ed, 



OF S. T; COLERIDGE. 109* 

hoih as a man of sensibility admires a lovely woman, 
with a feeling into which jealousy or envy cannot en- 
ter. With iEschylus or Sophocles he might perchancer 
have matched himself. 

In Euripides you have oftentimes a very near ap- 
proach to comedy, and I hardly know any writer in 
whom you can find such fine models of serious and 
dignified conversation. 



July 3, 1833. 

Style — Cavalier Slang— Junius — Prose and Verse — ' 
Imitation and Copy. 

The collocation of words is so artificial in Shak- 
speare and Milton, that you may as well think of 
pushing a brick out of a wall with your forefinger, a& 
attempt to remove a word out of any of their finished 
passages.* 



A good lecture upon style might be composed, by 
taking en the one hand the slang of L'Estrange, and 
perhaps even of Roger North,! which became so fash- 

* " The amotion or transposition will alter the thought, or the 
feeling, or at least the tone. They are as pieces of mosaic work, 
from which you cannot strike the smallest block without making 
a hole in the picture." — Quarterly Review, No. CIII., p. 7. 

t But Mr. Coleridge took a great distinction between Ne>rth 
and the other writers commonly associated with him. In speak- 
ing of the Examen and the Life of Lord North, in the Friend, 
Mr. C. calls them " two of the most interesting biographical 
works in our Isnguage, both for the weight of the matter, and the 
incuriosa felicitas of the style. The pages are all alive with the 
genuine idioms of our mother tongue. A fastidious taste, it is 
true, will find offence in the occasional vulgarisms, or what we 
now call slang, which not a few of our writers, shortly after the 
Restoration of Charles the Second, seem to have affected as a 
mark of loyalty. These instances, however, are but a trifling 
drawback. They are not sought for, as is too often and toa 
plainly done by L'Estrange, Collyer, Tom Brewn, and their im- 
itators. North never goes out of his way, either to seek them or 
to avoid them; and, in the main, his language gives us the very 
nerve, pulse, and sinew of a hearty, healthy, conversational Rng" 
Ushr—NQl li., p. 307.— Ed. 

10 



110 TABLE-TALK 

ionable after the Restoration as a mark of loyalty ; 
and on the other, the Johnsonian magniloquence or the 
balanced metre of Junius ; and then showing how each 
extreme is faulty, upon different grounds. 

It is quite curious to remark the prevalence of the 
Cavalier slang style in the divines of Charles the Sec- 
ond's time. Barrow could not of course adopt such 
a mode of writing throughout, because he could not in 
it have communicated his elaborate thinkings and lofty 
rhetoric ; but even Barrow not unfrequently lets slip a 
phrase here and there in the regular Roger North way 
—much to the delight, no doubt, of the largest part of 
his audience and contemporary readers. See particu- 
larly, for instances of this, his work on the Pope's su- 
premacy. South is full of it. 

The style of Junius is a sort of metre, the law of 
which is a balance of thesis and antithesis. When he 
gets out of his aphorismic metre into a sentence of live 
or six lines long, nothing can exceed the slovenliness 
of the English. Home Tooke and a long sentence 
seem the only two antagonists that were too much for 
him. Still the antithesis of Junius is a real antithesis 
of images or thought ; but the antithesis of Johnson is 
rarely more than verbal. 

The definition of good Prose is — proper words in 
their proper places — of good Verse — the most proper 
words in their proper places. The propriety is in 
either case relative. The words in prose ought to 
express the intended meaning, and no more ; if they 
attract attention to themselves, it is, in general, a fault. 
In the very best styles, as Southey's, you read page 
after page, understanding the author perfectly, without 
once taking notice of the medium of communication ; 
it is as if he had been speaking to you all the while. 
But in verse you must do more ; there the words, the 
media^ mus>t be beautiful, and ought to attract your no- 
tice — yet not so much and so perpetually as to destroy 
the unity which ought to result from the whole poem. 
This is the general rule, but, of course, subject to some 
modifications, according to the different kinds of prose 
or verse. Some prose may approach towards verse, 



OF S. T. COLERIDGE. Ill 

as oratory, and therefore a more studied exhibition of 
the media may be proper ; and some verse may border 
more on mere narrative, and there the style should be 
simpler. But the great thing in poetry is, qiiocunque 
modo, to effect a unity of impression upon the whole ; 
and a too great fulness and profusion of point in the 
parts will prevent this. Who can read with pleasure 
more than a hundred lines or so of Hudibras at one 
time 1 Each couplet or quatrain is so whole in itself, 
that you can't connect them. There is no fusion — just 
as it is in Seneca. 



Imitation is the mesothesis of Likeness and Differ- 
ence. The difference is as essential to it as the like- 
ness ; for without the difference, it would be Copy or 
Fac-simile. But, to borrow a term from astronomy, it 
is a librating mesothesis : for it may verge more to 
likeness, as in painting, or more to difference, as in 
sculpture. 



July 4, 1833. 

Dr. Johnson — Boswell — Burke — Newton — Milton. 

Dr. Johnson's fame now rests principally upon 
Boswell. It is impossible not to be amused with such 
a book. But his bow-wow manner must have had a 
good deal to do with the effect produced ; for no one, 
I suppose, will set Jolmson before Burke, and Burke 
was a great and universal talker ; yet now we hear 
nothing of this, except by some chance remarks in 
Boswell. The fact is, Burke, like all men of genius 
who love to talk at all, was very discursive and contin- 
uous ; hence he is not reported ; he seldom said the 
sharp short things that Johnson almost always did, 
which produce a more decided effect at the moment, 
and which are so much more easy to carry off.* Be- 

* Burke, I am persuaded, was not so continuous a talker as 
Coleridge. Madame de Stael told a nephew of the latter, at 
Coppet, that Mr. C. was a master of monologue, mais qu'il ne 
savait pas le dialogue. There was a spice of vindictiveness in 
this, the exact history of which is not worth explaining. And 



112 TABLE-TALK 

sides, as to Burke's testimony to Johnson's powers, 
you must remember that Burke was a great courtier ; 
and after all, Burke said and wrote more than once 
that he thought Johnson greater in talking than in 
writing, and greater in Bos well than in real life.* 

Newton was a great man, but you must excuse me 
if I think that it would take many Newtons to make 
one Milton. 



July 6, 1833. 

Pain ting — Music — Poetry. 

It is a poor compliment to pay to a painter to tell 
him that his figure stands out of the canvass, or that 
you start at the likeness of the portrait. Take almost 
any daub, cut it out of the canvass, and place the figure 
looking into or out of a window, and any one may take 
it for life. Or take one of Mrs. Salmon's wax queens 
or generals, and you will very sensibly feel the differ- 
ence between a copy, as they are, and an imitation, of 
the human form, as a good portrait ought to be. Look 
at that flower-vase of Van Huysum, and at these wax 

if dialogue must be cut down in its meaning to small talk, I, for 
one, will admit that Coleridge, among his numberless qualifica- 
tions, possessed it not. But I am sure that he could, when it 
suited him, converse as well as any one else, and with wbmen he 
frequently did converse in a very winning and popular style, con- 
finjng them, however, as well as he could, to the detail of facts 
or of their spontaneous emotions. In general, it was certainly 
otherwise. " You must not be surprised," he said to me, " at 
my talking so long to you — 1 pass so much of my time in pain 
and sohtude, yet everlastingly thinking, that, when you or any 
other persons call on me, I can hardly help easing my mind by 
pouring forth some of the accumulated mass of reflection and feel- 
ing, upon an apparently interested recipient." But the principal 
reason, no doubt, was the habit of his intellect, which was under 
a law of discoursing upon all subjects with reference to ideas or 
ultimate ends. You might interrupt him when you pleased, and 
he was patient of every sort of conversation except mere person- 
ality, which he absolutely hated. — Ed. 

* This was said, I believe, to the late Sir James Mackintosh.--i 
Editor. 



OF S. T. COLERIDGE. 113 

or Stone peaches and apricots ! The last are likest 
to their original, but what pleasure do they give ? 
None, except to children.* 

Some music is above me ; most music is beneath 
me. I like Beethoven and Mozart — or else some of 
the aerial compositions of the elder Italians, as Pales- 
trinaf and Carissimi. And I love Purcell. 

The best sort of music is what it should be — sacred ; 
the next best, the military, has fallen to the lot of the 
devil. 

Good music never tires me, nor sends me to sleep. 
I feel physically refreshed and strengthened by it, as 
Milton says he did. 

I could write as good verses now as ever I did, if I were 

* This passage, and those following, will evidence, what the 
readers even of this little work must have seen, that Mr. Cole- 
ridge had an eye, almost exclusively, for the ideal or universal in 
painting and music. He knew nothing of the details of handhng 
in the one, or of rules of composition in the other. Yet he was, 
to the best of my knowledge, an unerring judge of the merits of 
any serious effort in the fine arts, and detected the leading thought 
or feeling of the artist, with a decision which used sometimes to 
astonish me. Erery picture which I have looked at in company 
with him, seems now, to my mind, translated into English. He 
would sometimes say, after looking for a minute at a picture, gen- 
erally a modern one, " There's no use in stopping at this ; for I 
see the painter had no idea. It is mere mechanical drawing. 
Come on; here the artist meant something for the mind." It was 
just the same with his knowledge of music. His appetite for 
what he thought good was literally inexhaustible. He told me he 
could hsten to fine music for twelve hours together, and go away 
refreshed. But he required in music either thought or feeling; 
mere addresses to the sensual ear he could not away with ; hence 
his utter distaste for Rossini, and his reverence for Beethoven and 
Mozart. — Ed. 

t Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina was born about 1529, and 
died in 1594. I believe he may be considered the founder or 
reformer of the Italian church music. His masses, motets, and 
hymns, are tolerably well known among lovers of the old compo- 
sers ; but Mr. Coleridge used to speak with delight of some of 
Palestrina's madrigals which he heard at Rome. 

Giacomo Carissimi composed about the years 1640 — 1650. 
His style has been charged with effeminacy ; but Mr. C. thought 
it very graceful and chaste. Henry Purcell needs no addition in 
England. — Ed. 

10* 



1 14 TABLE-TALK 

perfectly free from vexations, and were in the ad libi- 
tum hearing of fine music, which has a sensible effect 
in harmonizing my thoughts, and in animating, and, as 
it were, hibricating my inventive facuky. The reason 
of my not finishing Christabel is not that I don't know 
how to do it — for I have, as I always had, the whole 
plan entire from beginning to end in my mind ;* but I 
fear I could not carry on with equal success the exe- 
cution of the idea, an extremely subtle and difficult 
one.f Besides, after this continuation of Faust, which 
they tell me is very poor, who can have courage to 
attempt a reversal of the judgment of all criticism 
against continuations \ Let us except Don Quixote, 
however, although the second part of that transcendent 
work is not exactly unofiatu with the original concep- 
tion. 



July 8, 1833. 

Public Schools. 

I AM clear for public schools as the general rule ; 
but for particular children private education may be 
proper. For the purpose of moving at ease in the 

* I should not have thought it necessary, but for the opinion 
expressed in Fraser's Magazine for October, 1834, p. 394, to re- 
mark here, that the verses pubHshed in the European Maga- 
zine, No. LXVIL, and dated April, 1815, purporting to be a 
conchision of Christabel, are not by Mr. Coleridge. With def- 
erence to the critic, I must take the liberty to say that they have 
not a particle of the spirit of the genuine poem ; and that the 
metre and rhythm are copied by one whose eye was better than 
his ear. Besides, Coleridge's Bracy was not Merlin, neither was 
his Geraldine the Lady of the Lake. In factj the genuine poem 
was well known, by recitation and transcription, nearly twenty 
years before its publication ; and the writer of the conclusion 
had, of course, seen it. I believe I could name the Avellaneda 
of Christabel — but he is now gone, and it would reflect no credit 
upon his memory. — Ed. 

t " The thing attempted in Christabel is the most difficult of 
execution in the whole field of romance — witchery by daylight — 
and the success is complete." — Quarterly Review, No. CIII., p. 39. 



OP S. T. COLERIDGE. 115 

best English society, — mind, I don't call the liondon 
exclusive clique the best English society, — the defect 
of a public education upon the plan of our great 
schools and Oxford and Cambridge is hardly to be 
supplied. But the defect is visible positively in some 
men, and only negatively in others. The first offend 
you by habits and modes of thinking and acting di- 
rectly attributable to their private education : in the 
others you only regret that the freedom and facility of 
the established and national mode of bringing up are 
not added to their good qualities 

I more than doubt the expediency of making even 
elementary mathematics a part of the routine in the 
system of the great schools. It is enough, I think, 
that encouragement and facilities should be given ; 
and I think more will be thus effected than by compel- 
ling all. Much less would I incorporate the German 
or French, or any modern language, into the school- 
labours. I think that a great mistake.* 

* " One constant blunder" — I find it so pencilled oy Mr. O. j>a 
a blank page of my copy of the " Bubbles from the Brunnens" — 
"of these New-I3rGomers — these Penny Magazine sages and 
philanthropists, in reference to our public schools, is to confine 
their view to what schoolmasters teach the boys, with entire 
oversight of all that the boys are excited to learn from each other 
and of themselves — with more geniality even because it is not a 
part of their compelled school knowledge. An Eton boy's knowl- 
■edge of the St. Lawrence, Mississippi, Missouri, Orellana, &c, 
will be generally found in exact proportion to his knowledge of 
the Ilissus, Hebrus, Orontes, &.c. ^ inasmuch as modern travels 
and voyages are more entertaining and fascinating than Cellarius ; 
or Robinson Crusoe, Dampier, and Captain Cook, than the 
Periegesis, Compare the lads themselves from Eton and Har- 
row, &c., with the alumni of the New-Broom Institution, and not 
the lists of school-lessons i and be that comparison the crite- 
jrion," — Eo. 



di 



116 table-talk 

August 4, 1833. 
Scott and Coleridge. 
Dear Sir Walter Scott and myself were exact, but 
harmonious, opposites in this ; — that every old ruin, 
hill, river, or tree, called up in his mind a host of his- 
torical or biographical associations, — ^jast as a bright 
pan of brass, when beaten, is said to attract the swarm- 
ing bees ; whereas, for myself, notv/ithstanding Dr. 
Johnson, I believe I should walk over the plain of Mar- 
athon without taking more interest in it than in any 
other plain of similar features. Yet I receive as much 
pleasure in reading the account of the battle, in Herod- 
otus, as any one can. Charles Lamb wrote an essay* 
on a man who lived in past time :— -1 thought of adding 
another to it on one who lived not in time at all, past, 
present, or future — but beside, or collaterally. 



August 10, 1833. 
Nervous Weakness — Hooker and Bull — Faith. 
A PERSON nervously weak, has a sensation of weak- 
ness which is as bad to him as muscular weakness. 
The only difference lies in the better chance of re- 
moval. 



The fact, that Hooker and Bull in their two palmary 
works respectively are read in the Jesuit Colleges, is 
a curious instance of the power of mind over the mosi 
profound of all prejudices. 



There are permitted moments of exultation through 
faith, when we cease to feel our own emptiness save 
as a capacity for our Redeemer's fulness. 

* I know not when or where ; hut are not all the writings of 
this exquisite genius the effusions of one whose spirit lived in past 
time "? The place which Lamb holds, and will continue to hold, 
in English literature, seems less liable to interruption than that of 
any other writer of our day. — Ed. 



of s. t. coleridge, 1| 

August 14, 1833. 

Quakers — Philanthropists — Jews. 
A. QUAKER is made up of ice and flame. He has no 
•composition, no mean temperature. Hence he is rare- 
ly interested about any public measure but he becomes 
a fanatic, and oversteps, in his irrespective zeal, every 
decency and every right opposed to his <;ourse. 



I have never known a trader in philanthropy, who 
was not wrong in heart somewhere or other. Individ- 
uals so distinguished are usually unhappy in their fam- 
ily relations, — men not benevolent or beneficent to in- 
dividuals, but almost hostile to them, yet lavishing 
money, and labour, and time, on the race, the abstract 
motion. The cosmopolitism which does not spring out 
of, and blossom upon, the deep-rooted stem of national- 
ity or patriotism, is a spurious and rotten growth. 

When I read the ninth, tenth, and eleventh chapters 
•of the Epistle to the Romans to that fine old man Mr. 
, at Ramsgate, he shed tears. Any Jew of sen- 
sibility must be deeply impressed by them. 

The two images farthest removed from each other 
which can be comprehended under one term, are, I 
think, Isaiah* — " Hear, O heavens, and give ear, 

earth !" — and Levi o^ Holywell-street — " Old 

* I remember Mr. Coleridge used to call Isaiah his ideal of the 
Hebrew prophet. He studied that part of the Scripture with un- 
remitting attention and most reverential admiration. Although 
Mr. C. was remarkably deficient in the technical memory of 
words, he could say a great deal of Isaiah by heart, and he de- 
lighted in pointing out the hexametrical rhythm of numerous pas- 
sages in the English version : — 

" Hear, O heavens, and give ear, ] earth : for the Lord hath 
spoken, 

1 have nourished and brought up children, j and they have re- 

belled against me. 
The ox knoweth his owner, j and the ass his master's crib : 
But Israel doth not know, | mv people doth not consider." — 
Editor. 



118 TABLE-TALK 

clothes !" — both of them Jews, you'll observe. Immane 
quantum discrepant ! 



August 15, 1833. 

Sallust — Thucydides — Herodotus — Gibbon — Key to 
the Decline of the Roman Empire. 

I CONSIDER the two works of Sallust which have 
come down to us entire, as romances founded on facts ; 
no adequate causes are stated, and there is no real con- 
tinuity of action. In Thucydides, you are aware from 
the beginning that you are reading the reflections of a 
man of great genius and experience upon the charac- 
ter and operation of the two great political principles 
in conflict in the civilized world in his time : his nar- 
rative of events is of minor importance, and it is evi- 
dent that he selects for the purpose of illustration. It 
is Thucydides himself whom you read throughout un- 
der the names of Pericles, Nicias, &c. But in Herod- 
otus it is just the reverse. He has as little subjectiv- 
ity as Homer, and, delighting in the great fancied epic 
of events, he narrates them without impressing any 
thing as of his own mind upon the narrative. It is the 
charm of Herodotus that he gives you the spirit of his 
age — that of Thucydides, that he reveals to you his 
own, which was above the spirit of his age. 



The difference between the composition of a history 
in modern and ancient times is very great ; still there 
are certain principles upon which a history of a mod- 
ern period may be written, neither sacrificing all truth 
and reality, like Gibbon, nor descending into mere bi- 
ography and anecdote. 

Gibbon's style is detestable ; but his style is not the 
worst thing about him. His history has proved an ef- 
fectual bar to all real familiarity with the temper and 
habits of imperial Rome. Few persons read the ori- 
ginal authorities, even those which are classical ; 
and certainly no distinct knowledge of the actual state 



OF S. T. COLERIDGE. 119 

of the empire can be obtained from Gibbon's rhetorical 
sketches. He takes notice of nothing but what may 
produce an effect ; he skips from eminence to emi- 
nence, without ever taking you through the valleys be- 
tween : in fact, his work is little else but a disguised 
collection of all the splendid anecdotes which he could 
find in any book concerning any persons or nations, 
from the Antonines to the capture of Constantinople* 
When I read a chapter in Gibbon, I seem to be look- 
ing through a luminous haze or fog : — the ligures come 
and go, I know not how or why, all larger than life, 
or distorted or discoloured ; nothing is real, vivid, 
true ; all is scenical, and, as it were, exhibited by can- 
dle-light. And then to call it a History of the Decline 
and Fall of the Roman Empire ! Was there ever a 
greater misnomer ? I protest I do not remember a sin- 
gle philosophical attempt made throughout the work 
to fathom the ultimate causes of the decline or fall of 
that empire. How miserably deficient is the narrative 
of the important reign of Justinian ! And that poor 
skepticism, which Gibbon mistook for Socratic philos- 
opy, has led him to misstate and mistake the charac- 
ter and influence of Christianity in a way which even 
an avowed infidel or atheist would not and could not 
have done. Gibbon was a man of immense reading ; 
but he had no philosophy ; and he never fully under- 
stood the principle upon which the best of the old his- 
torians wrote. He attempted to imitate their artificial 
construction of the whole work — their dramatic ordon- 
nance of the parts — without seeing that their histories 
were intended more as documents illustrative of the 
truths of political philosophy than as mere chronicles 
of events. 

The true key to the declension of the Roman em- 
pire — which is not to be found in all Gibbon's imVnense 
work — may be stated in two words : — the imperial 
character overlaying, and finally destroying, the wa- 
tionat character. Rome under Trajan was an empire 
>yithout a nation. 



120 TABLE-rALir 

August 16, 1833. 

Dr. JoJinson's Political Pamphlets — Taxation — 3irecP 
Representation — Universal Suffrage — Right of Wo- 
men to Vote — Home Tooke — Etymology of tlie Final 

IVE. 

I LIKE Dr. Johnson's political pamphlets better than 
any other parts of his works : — particularly his Taxa- 
tion no Tyranny is very clever and spirited, though 
he only sees half of his subject, and that not in a very 
philosophical manner. Plunder — Tribute — Taxation 
— are the three gradations of action by the sovereign 
on the property of the subject. The first is mere vio- 
lence, bounded by no law or custom, and is properly 
an act only between conqueror and conquered, and 
that, too, in the moment of victory. The second sup- 
poses Law ; but law proceeding only from, and dicta- 
ted by, one party, the conqueror ; law, by which he 
consents to forego his right of plunder upon condition 
of the conquered giving up to him, of their own accord,, 
a fixed commutation. The third implies compact, and 
negatives any right to plunder, — taxation being pro- 
fessedly for the direct benefit of the party taxed, that^ 
by paying a part, he may, through the labours and 
superintendence of the sovereign, be able to enjoy the- 
rest in peace. As to the right to tax being only com-- 
mensurate with direct representation, it is a fable, 
falsely and treacherously brought forward by those 
who know its hollo wness well enough. You may show 
its weakness in a moment, by observing that not even 
the universal sufii-age of the Benthamites avoids the 
diflSculty ;— for although it may be allowed to be con- 
trary to decorum that women should legislate, yet 
there can be no reason why women should not choose 
their representatives to legislate ; — and if it be said 
that they are merged in their husbands, let it be allowed 
where the wife has no separate property ; but where 
she has a distinct taxable estate, in which her husband 
has no interest, what right can her husband have to 
choose for her the person whose vote may affect hep 



I 



OP S. T. COLERIDGE. 121 

separate interest ? — Besides, at all events, an unmar- 
ried woman of age, possessing one thousand pounds a 
year, has surely as good a moral right to vote, if taxa- 
tion without representation is tyranny, as any ten- 
pounder in the kingdom. The truth of course is, that 
direct representation is a chimera, impracticable in 
fact, and useless or noxious if practicable. 



Johnson had neither eye nor ear ; for nature, there- 
fore, he cared, as he knew, nothing. His knowledge 
of town life was minute ; but even that was imperfect, 
as not being contrasted with the better life of the 
country. 

Home Tooke was once holding forth on language, 
when, turning to me, he asked me if I knew what the 
meaning of the final ive was in English words. I said 
I thought I could tell what he. Home Tooke himself, 
thought. " Why, what ?" said he. " Vis,'" I replied ; and 
he acknowledged I had guessed right. I told him, 
however, that I could not agree with him ; but be- 
lieved that the final ive came from ick — vicus, o'/ko^ ; 
the root denoting collectivity and community, and that 
it was opposed to the final ing, which signifies separa- 
tion, particularity, and individual property, from ingle^ 
a hearth, or one man's place or seat : o/'ko?, vicus, de- 
noted an aggregation of ingles. The alteration of the 
c and k of the root into the v was evidently the work 
of the digammate power, and hence we find the icus 
and ivus indifferently as finals in Latin. The precise 
difference of the etymologies is apparent in these 
phrases : — The lamb is sportive ; that is, has a nature 
or habit of sporting : the lamb is sportm^ ; that is, the 
animal is now performing a sport. Home Tooke upon 
this said nothing to my etymology ; but I believe he 
found that he could not make a fool of me, as he did 
of Godwin and some other of his butts. 

Vol. II.— F 11 



12^ TABLE-TALK 



August 17, 1833. 



^ The LonC^ in the English Version of the Psalms^ eie, 
— Scotch Kirk and Irving. 

It is very extraordinary, that in our translation of 
the Psalms, which professes to be from the Hebrew, the 
name Jehovah — 'o'^fiN — The Being, or God — should 
be omitted, and, instead of it, the Kvpioi, or Lord, of 
the Septuagint, be adopted. The Alexandrian Jews 
had a superstitious dread of writing the name of God, 
and put Kfipiog not as a translation, but as a mere mark 
or sign — every one readily understanding for what 
it really stood. We, who have no such superstition^ 
ought surely to restore the Jehovah, and thereby bring 
out in the true force the overwhelming testimony of 
the Psalms to the divinity of Christ, the Jehovah, of 
manifested God.* 

* I find the same remark in the late most excellent Bishop 
Sanford's diary, under date 17th December, 1827 : -" Xaiptn Iv 
jw Kvpt'o. Kupios idem significat quod p|i7T> apud Hebra^os. 
Hebra3i enim nomine niJl"' sanctissimo nenipe Dei nomine, nun- 
quam in coUoquio utebantur, sed vice ejus '•'^'^^ pronuntiabant;, 
quod LXX per Rv^ios exprimebant." — Remains of Bishop Sand- 
ford, vol. i., p. 207. 

Mr. Coleridge saw this work for the first time many months' 
after making the observation in the text. Indeed, it was the very 
last book he ever read. He was deeply interested in the picture' 
drawn of the Bishop, and said that the mental struggles and bodily 
sufferings indicated in the Diary had been his own for years past. 
He conjured me to peruse the Memoir and the Diary with great 
care : — " I have received," said he, " much spiritual comfort and' 
strength from the latter. ? were my faith and devotion, like 
my sufferings, equal to that good man's ! He felt, as I do, how- 
deep a depth is prayer in faith." 

In connexion with the text, I may add here, that Mr. C. said, 
that long before he knew that the late Bishop Middleton was of 
the same opinion, he had deplored the misleading inadequacy of 
our authorized version of the expression, trptordTOKos irdxrrn Krlerfuff 
in the Epistle to the Colossians, i., 15 ; Ss eanv f<«wu rov Qtov tou- 
aopdrov, irpMroroKo^ irdarjs Kriaeois- He rendered the verse in these 
■words : — " Who is the manifestation of God the invisible, the 
begotten antecedently to all creation ;" observing, that in irpoToroKoc 
there was a double superlative of priority, and that the natural 
Ba«aning of ^^ first-born of every creature" — the language of ou3 



OF S. T. COLERIDGE. 123 

1 cannot understand the conduct of the Scotch Kirk 
with regard to poor Irving. They might with ample 
reason have visited him for the monstrous indecencies 
of those exhibitions of the spirit ; perhaps the Kirk 
would not have been justified in overlooking such dis- 
graceful breaches of decorum : but to excommunicate 
him on account of his language about Christ's body 
was very foolish. Irving's expressions upon this sub- 
ject are ill-judged, inconvenient, in bad taste, and in 
terms false ; nevertheless, his apparent meaning, such 
as it is, is orthodox. Christ's body — as mere body, or 
rather carcass (for body is an associated word), was no 
more capable of sin or righteousness than mine or 
yours ; — that his humanity had a capacity of sin, follows 
from its own essence. He was of like passions as 
we, and was tempted. How could he be tempted, if he 
had no formal capacity of being seduced ? 



August 18, 1833. 

Milton's Egotism — Claudian — Sterne. 

In the Paradise Lost — indeed, in every on^ of his 
poems — it is Milton himself whom you see ; his Satan, 
liis Adam, his Raphael, almost his Eve — are all John 
Milton ; and it is a sense of this intense egotism that 
•gives me the greatest pleasure in reading iMilton's 
works. The egotism of such a man is a revelation 
of spirit. 



Claudian deserves more attention than is generally 
paid to him. He is the link between the old classic 
and the modern way of thinking in verse. You will 
observe in him an oscillation between the objective 
poetry of the ancients and the subjective mood of the 

version, — afforded no premiss for the causal hn in the next verse. 
The same criticism may be found in the Statesman's Manual, p. 
56, n. ; and see Bishop Sandford's judgment to the same effect, 
vol. i., p. 165. — Ed. 

F 2 



124 TABLE-TALK 

moderns. His power of pleasingly reproducing the 
same thought in different language is remarkable, as it 
is in Pope. Read particularly the PhcEuix, and see 
how the single image of renascence is varied.* 



I think highly of Sterne ; that is, of the first part of 
Tristram Shandy : for as to the latter part, about the 
widow Wadman, it is stupid and disgusting ; and the 
Sentimental Journey is poor sickly stuff. There is a 
great deal of affectation in Sterne, to be sure ; but still 
the characters of Trim and the two Shandiesj are most 

* Mr. Coleridge referred to Claudian's first Idyll : — 
" Oceani summo circumfluus oequore lucus 
Trans Indos Eurumque viret," &c. 
See the lines — 

*' Hie neque concepto fetu, nee semine surgit ; 
Sed pater est prolesque sibi, nuUoque creante 
Emeritos artus foecunda morte reformat, 
Et petit alternam totidem per funera vitam. 

Et cumulum texens pretiosa fronde Sabaeum 
Componit bustumque sibi partumque futurum. 

O senium positure rogo, falsisque sepulcris 
Natales habiture vices, qui ssepe renasci 
Exitio, proprioque soles pubescere leto, 
Accipe principium rursus. 

Parturiente rogo 

Victuri cineres 

Qui fuerat genitor, natus nunc prosilit idem, 
Succeditque novus 

O felix, haeresque tui ! quo solvimur omnes, 
Hoc tibi suppeditat vires ; praebetur origo 
Percinerem; moriturte non pereunte senectus." — Ed. 
t Mr. Coleridge considered the character of the father, the 
elder Shandy, as by much the finer delineation of the two. I fear 
his low opinion of the Sentimental Journey will not suit a thor- 
ough Sterneist ; but I could never get him to modify his criti- 
cism. He said, "The oftener you read Sterne, the more clearly 
will you perceive the great difference between Tristram Shandy 
and the Sentimental Journey. There is truth and reality in the 
one, and little beyond a clever affectation in the other." — Eo. 



J 



OF S. T. COLERIDGE. 125 

individual and delightful. Sterne's morals are bad, but 
I don't think they can do much harm to any one whom 
they would not find bad enough before. Besides, the 
oddity and erudite grimaces under which much of his 
dirt is hidden, take away the effect for the most part ; 
although, to be sure, the book is scarcely readable by 
women. 



August 20, 1833. 

Humour and Genius — Great Poets Good Men — Diction 
of the Old and New Testament Version — Hebrew — 
Vowels and Consonants, 

Men of humour are always in some degree men of 
genius ; wits are rarely so, although a man of genius 
may, among other gifts, possess wit, as Shakspeare. 



Genius must have talent as its complement and im- 
plement, just as, in like manner, imagination must 
have fancy. In short, the higher intellectual powers 
can only act through a corresponding energy of the 
lower. 



Men of genius are rarely much annoyed by the com- 
pany of vulgar people, because they have a power of 
looking at such persons as objects of amusement, of 
another race altogether. 



I quite agree with Strabo, as translated by Ben Jon- 
son in his splendid dedication of the Fox,* that there 
can be no great poet who is not a good man, though 
not, perhaps, a goody man. His heart must be pure ; 

* 'H 6} {aperfi) iroirjrov avvf^ivKvai tFj tov avdpdiroV Kal ovy^^ oi6v re 
ayaObv ytviaBai iroiijrfiv, jaq npdrepov ytvr]9ivTa avdpa dyaddv. — Lib. i., 
p. 33, folio. 

" For, if men will impartially, and not asquint, look towards 
the offices and function of a poet, they will easily conclude to 
themselves the impossibility of any man's bemg the good poet 
without first being a good man." 

11* 



126 TABLE-TALK 

he must have learned to look into his own heart, and 
sometimes to look at it ; for how can he who is igno- 
rant of his own heart know any thing of, or be able to 
move, the heart of any one else 1 



I think there is a perceptible difference in the ele- 
gance and correctness of the English in our versions 
of the Old and New Testaments. I cannot yield to the 
authority of many examples of usages which may be 
alleged from the New Testament version. St. Paul is 
very often most inadequately rendered, and there are 
slovenly phrases which would never have come from 
Ben Jonson, or any other good prose writer of that day. 

Hebrew is so simple, and its words are so few and 
near the roots, that it is impossible to keep up any 
adequate knowledge of it without constant application. 
The meanings of the words are chiefly traditional. 
The loss of Origen's Heptagiott Bible, in which he 
had written out the Hebrew words in Greek characters, 
is the heaviest which biblical literature has ever expe- 
rienced. It would have fixed the sounds as known at 
that time. 



Brute animals have the vowel sounds ; man only 
can utter consonants. It is natural, therefore, that the 
consonants should be marked first, as being the frame- 
work of the word ; and no doubt a very simple living 
language might be written quite intelligibly to the na- 
tives without any vowel sounds marked at all. The 
words would be traditionally and conventionally recog- 
nised, as in short-hand ; thus : Gd crtd th hvn nd th rth. 
I wish I understood Arabic ; and yet I doubt whether 
to the European philosopher or scholar it is worth while 
to undergo the immense labour of acquiring that or any 
other Oriental tongue, except Hebrew. 



V: 



OF S. T. COLERIDGE. 127 

August 23, 1833. 

Greek Accent and Quantity. 

The distinction between accent and quantity is clear, 
and was, no doubt, observed by the ancients in the 
recitation of verse. But I believe such recitation to 
have been always an artificial thing, and that the com- 
mon conversation was entirely regulated by accent. I 
do not think it possible to talk any language without 
confounding the quantity of syllables with their high 
or low tones ;* although you may sing or recitative the 
difference well enough. Why should the marks of 
accent have been considered exclusively necessary for 
teaching the pronunciation to the Asiatic or African 
Hellenist, if the knowledge of the acuted syllable did 
not also carry the stress of time with it ? If a,v6p&>7ror 

* This opinion, I need not say, is in direct opposition to the 
conclusion of Foster and Mitford, and scarcely reconcileable with 
the apparent meaning of the authorities from the old critics and 
grammarians. Foster's opponent was for rejecting the accents, 
and attending only to the syllabic quantity ; Mr. C. would, i}i prose, 
attend to the accents only as indicators of the quantity, being un- 
able to conceive any practical distinction between time and tone 
in common speech. Yet how can we deal with the authority of 
Dionysius of Halicamassus alone, who, on the one hand, discrim- 
inates quantity so exquisitely as to make four degrees of short- 
ness in the penultimates of bSos, poSos, rpdnos, and orpd^oj, and this 
expressly h \6yois \j^i\oTs, or plain prose, as well as in verse ; and 
on the other hand declares, according to the evidently correct 
interpretation of the passage, that the difference between music 
and ordinary speech consists in the number only, and not in the 
quality of tones : — tG I1o<j<^ iLaWdrrovra r^f h u)5aTi Kat dpydvoig, 
Koi ovxi Tu> Uoi'p. {Utpi Yvv. c. 11 !) The extreme sensibility of the 
Athenian ear to the accent in prose is, indeed, proved by numer- 
ous anecdotes, one of the most amusing of which, though, per- 
haps, not the best authenticated as a fact, is that of Demosthenes 
in the Speech for the Crown, asking, "Whether, O Athenians, 
does ^schines appear to you to be the mercenary {[xiadwrds) of 
Alexander, or his guest or friend (ffvos)?' It is said that he pro- 
nounced jjucrdiarbs with a false accent on the antepenultima, as 
H'ladiaroi, and that upon the audience immediately crying out, by 
way of correction, luaOuyrbs, with an emphasis, the orator continued 
coolly — otKovtis a Xiyovai — " You yourself hear what they say !" 
Demosthenes is also said, whether affectedly or in ignorance, to 



128 TABLE-TALK 

was to be pronounced in common conversation with a 
perceptible distinction of the length of the penultima, 
as well as of the elevation of the antepenultima, why- 
was not that long quantity also marked ? It was surely 
as important an ingredient in the pronunciation as the 
accent. And although the letter omega might, in such 
a word, show the quantity, yet what do you say to such 
words as xeXoy^cX'^ri, ru-^Ao-at,^ and the like — the quantity 
of the penultima of which is not marked to the eye at 
all ? Besides, can we altogether disregard the practice 
of the modern Greeks ? Their confusion of accent and 
quantity in verse is of course a barbarism, though a 
very old one, as the versus politici of John Tzetzes* in 

have sworn in some speech by ^KckX^-kios, throwing the accent 
falsely on the antepenultima, and that, upon being interrupted for 
it, he declared, in his justification, that the pronunciation was 
proper, for that the divinity was //n-jof, mild. The expressions in 
Plutarch are very striking : — " Q6pvSov sKlvnaiv, wjivve 61 koX rbv 
^AaK\r}T:i.bv, irpotrapo^vvutv ^AokX^itiov, kuI TrapiSeUvvev avrov dpOSs Xeyov- 
ra' ilvac yap rbv Oibv jjiriov' koI inl tovto iroXXaKis idopvBrjdri.^^ — Dec. 
Oral.— Ed. 

* See bis Chiliads. The sort of verses to which Mr. Cole- 
ridge alluded are the following, which those who consider the 
scansion to be accentual, take for tetrameter catalectic iambics, 
like— 

(dij ^Sij Kai \ voig irpdyjiaaiv | koi Sc^iols \ bfiiXeTv — ) 

h-rrdcrov 66 \ vairo \a6av | fKfXevi | y^^pvciov. 

KpoTffov Kiv£i irpoj yiXwra (ia6i(ni kol rfj 9i(f. 

'O ' ApraKdftas (iaai\fvs ^tpvyiag rrjs jufydAjjj. 

'HpdSoTOS rbv Tvyriv 6i Tioijxiva fiiv ov \iyei. '■ 

'H 'E.pi^Qiix)g llp6Kpii re Kal llpa^idiai Kdpr]. 

'Amfiaj, wj AidSwpos ypd^ei koI A'mv ufxa. — Chil. 1. 

I'll climb the frost | y mountains high j , and there I'll coin | the 

weather ; 
I'll tear the rain | bow from the sky | , and tie both ends | together. 
Some critics, however, maintain these verses to be trochaics, 
although very loose and faulty. — See Foster, p. 113. A curious 
instance of the early confusion of accent and quantity may be seen 
in Prudentius, who shortens the penultima in eremus and iiola, 
from tprjfxoi and eUm'Xa. 

Cui jejuna erc7ni saxa loquacibus 
Exundant scatebris, &c. — Cathemer^\. 89. 

cognatumque malum, pigmenta, Camoenas, 

Idola, conflavit fallendi trina potestas. 

Conf. Si/mm., 47. — Ed. 



-^ 



OF S. T. COLERIDGE. 129 

the twelfth century, and the Anacreontics prefixed to 
Proclus, will show ; but these very examples prove, a 
fortiori, what the common pronunciation in prose 
then was. 



August 24, 1833. 

Consolation in Distress — Mock Evangelicals — Autumn 
Day. 

I AM never very forward in offering spiritual conso- 
lation to any one in distress or disease. I believe that 
such resources, to be of any service, must be self- 
evolved in the first instance. I am something of the 
Quaker's mind in this, and am inclined to wait for the 
spirit. 



The most common effect of this mock evangelical 
spirit, especially with young women, is self-inflation 
and busy-bodyism. 



How strange and awful is the synthesis of life and 
death in the gusty winds and falling leaves of an au- 
tumnal day ! 



August 25, 1833. 

Rosetti on Dante — Laughter — Farce and Tragedy. 

RosETTi's view of Dante's meaning is in great part 
just, but he has pushed it beyond all bounds of com- 
mon sense. How could a poet — and such a poet as 
Dante — have written the details of the allegory as 
conjectured by Rosetti ? The boundaries between his 
allegory and his pure picturesque are plain enough, I 
think, at first reading. 



To resolve laughter into an expression of contempt 
is contrary to fact, and laughable enough. Laughter 
F3 



130 TABLE-TALK 

is a convulsion of the nerves ; and it seems as if na- 
ture cut short the rapid thrill of pleasure on the nerves 
by a sudden convulsion of them, to prevent the sensation 
becoming painful. Aristotle's definition is as good as 
can be — surprise at perceiving any thing out of its usual 
place, when the unusualness is not accompanied by a 
sense of serious danger. Such surprise is always 
pleasurable ; and it is observable that surprise accom- 
panied with circumstances of danger becomes tragic. 
Hence farce may often border on tragedy ; indeed, 
farce is nearer tragedy in its essence than comedy is. 



August 28, 1833. 

Baron Von Humboldt — Modern Diplomatists. 

Baron Von Humboldt, brother of the great travel- 
ler, paid me the following compliment at Rome. " I 
confess, Mr. Coleridge, I had my suspicions that you 
were here in a political capacity of some sort or other ; 
but upon reflection I acquit you. For in Germany, 
and, I believe, elsewhere on the continent, it is gener- 
ally understood that the English government, in order 
to divert the envy and jealousy of the world at the 
power, wealth, and ingenuity of your nation, makes a 
point, as a ruse de guerre, of sending out none but fools 
of gentlemanly birth and connexions as diplomatists 
to the courts abroad. An exception is, perhaps, some- 
times made for a clever fellow, if sufficiently libertine 
and unprincipled." Is the case much ahered now, do 
you know ? 



What dull coxcombs your diplomatists at home gen- 
erally are. I remember dining at Mr. Frere's once in 
company with Canning and a few other interesting 

men. Just before dinner Lord called on Frere, 

and asked himself to dinner. From the moment of 
his entry he began to talk to the whole party, and in 
French — all of us being genuine English — and I was 
told his French was execrable. He had followed the 



OF S. T. COLERIDGE. 131 

Russian army into F;-ance, and seen a good deal o( the 
great men concerned in the war : of none of those 
things did he say a word, but went on, sometimes in 
English and sometimes in French, gabbling about cook- 
ery, and dress, and the like. At last he paused for a 
little, and I said a few words, remarkinor how a great 
image may be reduced to the ridiculous and contempt- 
ible by bringing the constituent parts into prominent 
detail, and mentioned the grandeur of the deluge and 
the preservation of life in Genesis and the Paradise 
Lost,* and the ludicrous effect produced by Drayton's 
description in his Noah's Flood : — 

" And now the beasts are walking from the wood, 
As well of ravine, as that chew the cud. 
The king of beasts his fury doth suppress^ 
And to the Ark leads down the lioness ; 
The bull for his beloved mate doth low, 
And to the Ark brings on the fair-eyed cow," &c. 

Hereupon Lord resumed, and spoke in raptures 

of a picture which he had lately seen of Noah's Ark, 
and said the animals were all marching two and two, 
the littles ones first, and that the elephants came last 
in great majesty and filled up the fore-ground. "Ah ! 
no doubt, my lord," said Canning ; " your elephants, 
wise fellows ! stayed behind to pack up their trunks V 
This floored the ambassador for half an hour. 

In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries almost 
all our ambassadors were distinguished men.f Read 

* Genesis, c. vi., vii. Par. Lost, book xi., v., 728, &c. 
t Yet Diego de Mendoza, the author of Lazarillo de Tormes, 
himself a veteran diplomatist, describes his brethren of the craft, 
and their duties, in the reigns of Charles the Emperor and Philip 
the Second, in the following terms : — 

" G embajadores, puros majaderos, 
Que si los reyes quieren enganar, 
Comienzan por nosotros los primeros, 
Nuestro mayor negocio es, no 'anar, 
Y jamas hacer cosa, ni dezilla, 
Que no corramos riesgo de enscnar.''^ 
What a pity it is that modern diplomatists, who, for the most 
part, very carefully observe the precept contained in the last twsf 



1 32 TABLE-TALK 

Lloyd's State Worthies. The third-rate men of those 
days possessed an infinity of knowledge, and were in- 
timately versed, not only in the history, but even in 
the heraldry, of the countries in which they were resi- 
dent. Men were almost always, except for mere com- 
pliments, chosen for their dexterity and experience — 
not, as now, by Parliamentary interest. 



The sure way to make a foolish ambassador is to 
bring him up to it. What can an English minister 
abroad really want but an honest and bold heart, a love 
for his country and the ten commandments 1 Your art 
diplomatic is stuff — no truly great man now would ne- 
gotiate upon any such shallow principles. 



August 30, 1833. 

Man cannot be Stationary — Fatalism and Providence* 

If a man is not rising upwards to be an angel, de- 
pend upon it, he is sinking downwards to be a devil. 
He cannot stop at the beast. The most savage of 
men are not beasts ; they are worse, a great deal 
worse 



The conduct of the Mahommedan and Western na- 
tions on the subject of contagious plague illustrates the 
two extremes of error on the nature of God's moral 
government of the world. The Turk changes Provi- 
dence into fatalism ; the Christian relies upon it — 
when he has nothing else to rely on. He does not 
practically rely upon it at all. 

lines of this passage, should not equally bear in mind the impor- 
tance of the preceding remark — that their principal business is just 
to do na mischief. — Eiy. ♦ 



< 



> 



Of S. T. COLERIDGE. 133 

September 2, 1833. 

Characteristic Temperament of Nations — Greek Partt" 
cles — Latin Compounds — Propertius — Tibullus — - 
Lucan — Statins — - Valerius Flaccus — Claudian — - 
Persius — Prudentius — Hermesianax. 

The English affect stimulant nourishment — ^beef 
and beer. The French, excitants, irritants — nitrous 
oxyde, alcohol, champaign. The Austrians, sedatives 
— hyoscyamus. The Russians, narcotics — opium, to- 
bacco, and beng. 



It is worth particular notice how the style of Greek 
oratory, so full, in the times of political independence, of 
connective particles, some of passion, some of sensation 
only, and escaping the classification of mere grammati- 
cal logic, became, in the hands of the declaimers and 
philosophers of the Alexandrian era, and still later, en- 
tirely deprived of this peculiarity. So it was with Homer 
as compared with Nonnus, Tryphiodorus, and the like. 
In the latter there are in the same number of lines 
fewer words by one half than in the Iliad. All the ap- 
poggiaturas of time are lost. 

The old Latin poets attempted to compound as 
largely as the Greek ; hence in Ennius such words as 
belligerentes, &Lc. In nothing did Virgil show his judg- 
ment more than in rejecting these, except just where 
common usage had sanctioned them, as omnipotens 
and a few more. He saw that the Latin was too far 
advanced in its formation, and of too rigid a character, 
to admit such composition or agglutination. In this 
particular respect Virgil's Latin is very admirable and 
deserving preference. Compare it with the language 
of Lucan or Statius, and count the number of words 
used in an equal number of lines, and observe how 
many more short words Virgil has. 

I cannot quite understand the grounds of the high 
admiration which the ancients expressed for Proper- 
tius, and I own that Tibullus is rather insipid to me. 
12 



1 34 TABLE-TALK 

Lucan was a man of great powers ; but what was to 
be made of such a shapeless fragment of party war- 
fare, and so recent too ! He had fancy rather than 
imagination, and passion rather than fancy. His taste 
was wretched, to be sure ; still the Pharsalia is in my 
judgment a very wonderful work for such a youth as 
Lucan* was. 

I think Statins a truer poet than Lucan, though he is 
very extravagant sometimes. Valerius FJaccus is very 
pretty in particular passages. I am ashamed to say, I 
have never read Silius Italicus. Claudian I recom- 
mend to your careful perusal, in respect of his being 
properly the first of the moderns, or at least the transi- 
tional Imk between the Classic and the Gothic mode of 
thought. 

I call Persius hard — not obscure. He had a bad 
style ; but I dare say, if he had lived,! he would have 
learned to express himself in easier language. There 
are many passages in him of exquisite felicity, and his 
vein of thought is manly and pathetic. 

Prudentius| is curious for this, — that you see how 
Christianity forced allegory into the place of mythol- 
ogy. Mr. Frere [b <pixUuXo(i^ o ycocXoK^yuOoi] used to 
esteem the Latin Christian poets of Italy very highly, 
and no man in our times was a more competent 
judge than he. 



How very pretty are those lines of Hermesianax in 
Athenaeus about the poets and poetesses of Greece \^ 

* Lucan died by the command of Nero, a. d. 65, in his twenty* 
sixth year. I think this should be printed at the beginning of 
every book of the Pharsalia. — Ed. 

t Aulus Persius Flaccus died in the 30th year of his age, a. d. 
62.— Ed. 

% Aurelius Prudentius Clemens was bom a. d. 348, in Spain. 
—Ed. 

^ See the fragment from the Leontium : — 

Oijjv fiiv (piXos vlbs avfiyaytv Olay^oio 

^Aypidnrjv, Qpfjaaav trretXa/ifvoj Kiddpi}V 
klSddiv K. T. X. Athen. xiii., s. 71.— -En. 



OF S. T. COLERIDGE. 135 



September 4, 1833. 

Destruction of Jerusalem — Epic Poem — German and 
English — Modern Travels — Paradise Lost. 
I HAVE already told you that in my opinion the de- 
struction of Jerusalem is the only subject now left for 
an epic poem of the highest kind. Yet, with all its 
great capabilities, it has this one grand defect — that, 
whereas a poem, to be epic, must have a personal 
interest, — in the destruction of Jerusalem no genius or 
skill could possibly preserve the interest for the hero 
from being merged in the interest fur the event. The 
fact is, the event itself is too sublime and overwhelm- 
ing. 



In my judgment, an epic poem must either be na- 
tional or mundane. As to Arthur, you could not by 
any means make a poem on him national to English- 
men. What have we to do with him ? Milton saw 
this, and with a judgment at least equal to his genius, 
took a mundane theme — one common to all mankind. 
His Adam and Eve are all men and women inclu- 
sively. Pope satirises Milton for making God the 
Father talk like a school divine.* Pope was hardly the 
man to criticise Milton. The truth is, the judgment of 
Milton in the conduct of the celestial part of this story is 
very exquisite. Wherever God is represented as directly 
acting as Creator, without any exhibition of his own 
essence, Milton adopts the simplest and sternest lan- 
guage of the Scriptures. He ventures upon no poetic 
diction, no amplification, no pathos, no affection. It is 
truly the Voice or the Word of the Lord coming to, 
and acting on, the subject Chaos. But, as some per- 
sonal interest was demanded for the purposes of poetry 

* " Milton's strong pinion now not Heav'n can bound, 
Now, serpent-like, in prose he sweeps the ground : 
In quibbles angel and archangel join, 
And God the Father turns a school divine." 

1 Epist., 2d book of Hor., v. 99. 



136 TABLE-TALK 

Milton takes advantage of the dramatic representation 
of God's address to the Son, the Filial Alterity, and in 
those addresses slips in, as it were by stealth, language 
of affection, or thought, or sentiment. Indeed, al- 
though Mihon was undoubtedly a high Arian in his 
mature life, he does in the necessity of poetry give a 
greater objectivity to the Father and the Son, than he 
would have justified in argument. He was very wise in 
adopting the strong anthropomorphism of the Hebrew 
Scriptures at once. Compare the Paradise Lost with 
Klopstock's Messiah, and you will learn to appreciate 
Milton's judgment and skill quite as much as his 
genius. 



The conquest of India by Bacchus might afford 
scope for a very brilliant poem of the fancy and the 
understanding. 



It is not that the German can express external ima- 
gery more /WZZ3/ than English; but that it can flash 
more images at once on the mind than the English can. 
As to mere power of expression, I doubt whether even 
the Greek surpasses the English. Pray, read a very 
pleasant and acute dialogue in Schlegel's Athenaeum 
between a German, a Greek, a Roman, Italian, and a 
Frenchman, on the merits of their respective lan- 
guages. 



I wish the naval and military officers who write ac- 
counts of their travels would just spare us their sen- 
timent. The Magazines introduced this cant. Let 
these gentlemen read and imitate the old captains and 
admirals, as Dampier, &c. 



October 15, 1833. 

The Trin ity — Incarnation — Redemption — Education. 

The Trinity is the Idea: the incarnation, which 
implies the Fall, is the Fact : the redemption is the 
mesothesis of the two — that is — the Religion. 



OF S. T. COLERIDGE. 137 

If you bring up your children in a way which puts 
them out of sympathy with the religious feelings of the 
nation in which they live — the chances are, that they 
will ultimately turn out ruffians or fanatics — and one as 
likely as the other. 



October 23, 1833. 

Elegy — Lavacrum PaUados — Greek and Latin Pen- 
tameter — Milton's Latin Poems — Poetical Filter — 
Gray and Cotton. 

Elegy is the form of poetry natural to the reflect- 
ive mind. It may treat of any subject, but it must 
treat of no subject for itself; but always and exclu- 
sively with reference to the poet himself. As he will 
fell regret for the past or desire for the future, so sor- 
row and love become the principal themes of elegy. 
Elegy presents every thing as lost and gone, or absent 
and future. The elegy is the exact opposite of the 
Homeric epic, in which all is purely external and ob- 
jective, and the poet is a mere voice. 

The true lyric ode is subjective too ; but then it de- 
lights to present things as actually existing and visible, 
although associated with the past, or coloured highly 
by the subject of the ode itself. 



I think the Lavacrum PaUados of Calliraachus very 
beautiful indeed, especially that part about the mother 
of Tiresias and Minerva.* I have a mind to try how 
it would bear translation ; but what metre have we to 
answer in feeling to the elegiac couplet of the Greeks ? 

I greatly prefer the Greek rhythm of the short verse 
to Ovid's, though, observe, I don't dispute his taste with 
reference to the genius of his own language. Augus- 
tus Schlegel gave me a copy of Latin elegiacs on the 
King of Prussia's going down the Rhine, in which he 

IlaT^ff, ^KOavaia vvfxfav fiiav Iv ttoku QrjSais 

TrouXu Ti Kal wipi 6ri (piXaro rdv iripav, 
uarifia Tupiaiao, kui ovtoku )(a)p£j eyivTO' k. t. A. V. 57, &C. 

12* 



138 TABLE-TALK 

had almost exclusively adopted the manner of Proper- 
tius. I thought them very elegant. 

You may find a few minute faults in Milton's Latin 
verses ; but you will not persuade me that, if these 
poems had come down to us as written in the age of 
Tiberius, we should not have considered them to be 
very beautiful. 

I once thought of making a collection, — to be called 
" The Poetical Filter,"— upon the principle of simply 
omitting from the old pieces of lyrical poetry which 
we have, those parts in which the whim or the bad taste 
of the author or the fashion of his age prevailed over 
his genius. You would be surprised at the number of 
exquisite wholes which might be made by this simple 
operation, and, perhaps, by the insertion of a single line 
or half a line, out of poems which are now utterly dis- 
regarded on account of some odd or incongruous pas- 
sages in them ; — ^just as whole volumes of Wordsworth's 
poems were formerly neglected or laughed at, solely 
because of some few wilfulnesses, if I may so call 
them, of that great man — while at the same time five 
sixths of his poems would have been admired, and 
indeed popular, if they had appeared without those 
drawbacks, under the name of Byron, or Moore, or 
Campbell, or any other of the fashionable favourites of 
the day. But he has won the battle now, ay ! and 
will wear the crown, while English is English. 



I think there is something very majestic in Gray's 
Installation Ode ; but as to the Bard and the rest of 
his lyrics, I must say I think them frigid and artificial. 
There is more real lyric feeling in Cotton's Ode on 
Winter.* 

* Let me borrow Mr. Wordsworth's account of, and quotation 
from, this poem : — 

" Finally, I will refer to Cotton's * Ode upon Winter,' an ad- 
mirable composition, though stained with some peculiarities of the 
acre in which he lived, for a general illustration of the character- 



OF S. T. COLERIDGE. 139 

November 1, 1833. 

Homeric Heroes in Shakspeare — Dryden — Dr. John- 
son— Scott's Novels — Scope of Christianity. 

Compare Nestor, Ajax, Achilles, &;c., in the Troilus 
and Cressida of Shakspeare, with their namesakes in 

istics of Fancy. The middle part of this ode contains a most 
lively description of the entrance of Winter, with his retinue, as 
* a palsied kmg,' and yet a military monarch, advancing for con- 
quest with his army ; the several bodies of which, and their arms 
and equipments, are described with a rapidity of detail, and a pro- 
fusion of fanciful comparisons, which indicate, on the part of the 
poet, extreme activity of intellect, and a correspondent hurry of 
delightful feeling. He retires from the foe into his fortress, 
where — 

" ' a magazine 
Of sovereign juice is cellared in ; 
Liquor that will the siege maintain 
Should Phoebus ne'er return again.' 
Though myself a. water-drinker, I cannot resist the pleasure of 
transcribing what follows, as an instance still more happy of Fancy 
employed in the treatment of feeling, than, in its preceding pas- 
sages, the poem supplies of her management of forms. 
" ' 'Tis that, that gives the Poet rage. 
And thaws the jelli'd blood of Age ; 
Matures the Young, restores the Old, 
And makes the fainting coward bold. 

" ' It lays the careful head to rest, 
Calms palpitations in the breast, 
Renders our lives' misfortune sweet ; 

" ' Then let the chill Sirocco blow, 

And gird us round with hills of snow ; 

Or else go whistle to the shore, 

And make the hollow mountains roar : 
" ' While we together jovial sit 

Careless, and crowned with mirth and wit ; 

Where, though bleak winds confine us home, 

Our fancies round the world shall roam. 
" ' We'll think of all the friends we know, 

And drink to all worth drinking to ; 

When, having drunk all thine and mine, 

We rather shall want healths than wine. 
" ' But where friends fail us, we'll supply 

Our friendships with our charity ; 



140 TABLE-TALK 

the Iliad. The old heroes seem all to have been at 
school ever since. I scarcely know a more striking 
instance of the strength and pregnancy of the Gothic 
mind. 



Dryden's genius was of that sort which catches fire 
by its own motion ; his chariot wheels get hot by dri- 
ving fast. 

Dr. Johnson seems to have been really more pow- 
erful in discoursing viva voce in conversation than 
with his pen in hand. It seems as if the excite- 
ment of company called something like reality and 
consecuiiveness into his reasonings, which in his wri- 
tings I cannot see. His antitheses are almost always 
verbal only ; and sentence after sentence in the Ram- 
bler may be pointed out, to which you cannot attach 
any definite meaning whatever. In his political pamph- 
lets there is more truth of expression than in his other 
works, for the same reason that his conversation is 
better than his writings in general. 

Men that remote in sorrows live 

Shall by our lusty brimmers thrive. 
*' * We'll drink the wanting into wealth, 

And those tiiat languish into health, 

Th' afflicted into joy, th' oppress'd 

Into security and rest. 
" ' The worthy in disgrace shall find 

Favour return again more kind. 

And in restraint who stifled lie 

Shall taste the air of liberty. 
" ' The brave shall triumph in success. 

The lovers shall have mistresses, 

Poor unregarded virtue, praise. 

And the neglected poet, bays. 
" * Thus shall our healths do others good, 

Whilst we ourselves do all we would ; 

For, freed from envy and from care. 

What would we be but what we are V " 

Preface to the editions of Mr. VT.V PoemSt 
in 1815 and 1820.— Ed. 



OF S- T. COLERIDGE. 141 

When I am very ill indeed I can read Scott's novels, 
and they are almost the only books I can then read, 
I cannot at such times read the Bible ; my mind re- 
flects on it, but I can't bear the open page. 



Unless Christianity be viewed and felt in a high 
and comprehensive way, how large a portion of our 
intellectual and moral nature does it leave without 
object and action ! 



Let a young man separate I from Me as far as he 
possibly can, and remove Me till it is almost lost in 
the remote distance. " I am Me," is as bad a fault in 
intellectuals and morals as it is in grammar, while 
none but one — God — can say, " I am I," or, " That I 



November 9, 1833. 

Times of Charles I. 

How many books are still written and published 
about Charles the First and his times ! Such is the 
fresh and enduring interest of that grand crisis of mor- 
als, religion, and government ! But these books are 
none of them works of any genius or imagination ; 
not one of these authors seems to be able to throw 
himself back into that age ; if they did, there would 
be less praise and less blame bestowed on both sides. 



December 21, 1833. 

Messenger of the Covenant — Prophecy — Logic of Ideas 
and of Syllogisms. 

"When I reflect upon the subject of the messenger 
of the covenant, and observe the distinction taken in 
the prophets between the teaching and suffering 
Christ, — the Priest, who was to precede, and the tri- 
umphant Messiah, the Judge, who was to follow, — and 
how Jesus always seems to speak of the Son of Man 



142 TABLE-TALK 

in a future sense, and yet always at the same time as 
identical with himself; I sometimes think that our 
Lord himself in his earthly career was the Messenger ; 
and that the way is now still preparing for the great 
and visible advent of the Messiah of Glory. I men- 
tion this doubtingly. 



What a beautiful sermon or essay might be written 
on the growth of prophecy ! — from the germe, no bigger 
than a man's hand, in Genesis, till the column of cloud 
gathers size, and height, and substance, and assumes 
the shape of a perfect man ; just like the smoke in the 
Arabian Nights' tale, which comes up and at last takes 
a geni's shape.* 



The logic of ideas is to that of syllogisms as the 
infinitesimal calculus to common arithmetic ; it proves, 
but at the same time supersedes. 



January 1, 1834. 

W. S. Landor^s Poetry — Beauty — Chronological Ar- 
rangement of Works. 

What is it that Mr. Landor wants, to make him a 
poet? His powers are certainly very considerable, 
but 4ie seems to be totally deficient in that modifying 
faculty which compresses several units into one whole. 
The truth is, he does not possess imagination in its 
highest form, — that of stamping il piu nelV uno. Hence 
his poems, taken as wholes, are unintelligible ; you 

* The passage in Mr. Coleridge's mind was, I suppose, the fol- 
lowing ; — " He (the fisherman) set it before him, and while he 
looked at it attentively, there came out a very thick smoke, which 
obliged him to retire two or three paces from it. The smoke as- 
cended to the clouds, and, exfending itsetf along the sea, and upon 
the shore, formed a great mist, which, we may well imagine, did 
mightily astonish the fisherman. When the smoke was all out of 
the vessel, it re-united itself, and became a solid body, of which 
there was formed a geni twice as high as the greatest of gianta." 
T^Story of the Fisherman. Ninth Night. — Ed. 



OF S. T. COLERIDGE. 143 

have eminences excessively bright, and all the ground 
around and between them in darkness. Besides which, 
he has never learned, with all his energy, how to write 
simple and lucid English. 



The Useful, the Agreeable, the Beautiful, and the 
Good, are distinguishable. You are wrong in resolv* 
ing Beauty into Expression or Interest ; it is quite 
distinct ; indeed, it is opposite, although not contrary. 
Beauty is an immediate presence, between [inter) 
which and the beholder nihil est. It is always one 
and tranquil ; whereas the interesting always disturbs 
and is disturbed. I exceedingly regret the loss of 
those essays on Beauty which I wrote in a Bristol 
newspaper. I would give much to recover them.* 



After all you can say, I still think the chronological 
order the best for arranging a poet's works. All your 
divisions are in particular instances inadequate, and 
they destroy the interest which arises from watching 
the progress, maturity, and even the decay of genius. 



January 3, 1834. 

Toleration — -Norwegians, 

I HAVE known books written on Tolerance, the proper 
title of which would be — intolerant or intolerable books 
on tolerance. Should not a man who writes a book 
expressly to inculcate tolerance learn to treat with 
respect, or at least with indulgence, articles of faith 
which tens of thousands ten times told of his fellow-sub- 

* I preserve the conclusion of this passage, in the hope of its 
attracting the attention of some person who may have local or 
personal advantages in making a search for these essays, upon 
which Mr. C. set a high value. He had an indistinct recollection 
of the subject, but told me that, to the best of his belief, the es- 
says were published in the Bristol Mercury, a paper belonging to 
Mr. Gutch. The years in which the inquiry should be made 
would be, I presume, 1807 and 1808.— Ed 



144 TABLE-TALK 

jects or his fellow-creatures believe with all iheir soulsy 
and upon the truth of which they rest their tranquillity 
in this world, and their hopes of salvation in the next, 
' — those articles being at least maintainable against hia 
arguments, and most certainly innocent in themselves 1 
— Is it fitting to run Jesus Christ in a silly parallel 
with Socrates— the Being whom thousand millions of 
intellectual creatures, of whom I am an humble unit, 
take to be their Redeemer, with an Athenian philoso- 
pher, of whom we should know nothing except through 
his glorification in Plato and Xenophon ? — And then to 
hitch Latimer and Servetus together ! To be sure, 
there was a stake and a fire in each case, but where 
the rest of the resemblance is I cannot see. What 
ground is there for throwing the odium of Servetus's 
death upon Calvin alone ? — Why, the mild Melancthon 
wrote to Calvin,* expressly to testify his concurrence 
in the act, and no doubt he spoke the sense of the 
German reformers ; the Swiss churches advised the 
punishment in formal letters, and I rather think there 
are letters from the English divines, approving Calvin's 
conduct ! — Before a man deals out the slang of the 
day about the great leaders of the Reformation, he 
should learn to throw himself back to the age of the 
Reformation, when the two great parties in the church 
were eagerly on the watch to fasten a charge of heresy 
on the other. Besides, if ever a poor fanatic thrust 
himself into the fire, it was Michael Servetus. He was 
a rabid enthusiast, and did every thing he could in the 
way of insult and ribaldry to provoke the feeling of the 
Christian church. He called the Trinity triceps mon- 
strum et Cerherum quendam tripartitum^ and so on. 

Indeed, how should the principle of religious tolera- 
tion have been acknowledged at first ? It would re- 
quire stronger arguments than any which I have heard 
as yet, to prove that men in authority have not a right, 

* Melancthon's words are : — " Tuo judicio prorsus assentior. 
Affirmo etiam vestros magistratus juste fecisse quod hominem 
Wasphemum, re ordine judicata, inter fccerunt'' — 14th Oct., 1554. 
—Ed. 



OF S. T. COLERIDGE. 145 

ifivolved in an imperative duty, to deter those undei' 
their control from teaching or countenancing doctrines^ 
which they believe to be damnable, and even topunisb 
with death those who violate such prohibition. I an> 
sure that Bellarmine would have had small difficulty in 
turning Locke round his fingers' ends upon this groundv 
A right to protection I can understand ; but a right 
to toleration seems to me a contradiction i;i terms» 
Some criterion must in any case be adopted by the state j 
otherwise it might be compelled to admit whatever hid- 
eous doctrine and practice any man or number of men 
may assert to be his or their religion, and an article of his 
or their faith. It was the same pope who commanded 
the Romanists of England to separate from the national 
churchy which previously their own consciences had 
not dictated, nor the decision of any council, and who 
also commanded them to rebel against Queen Eliza- 
beth, whom they were bound to obey by the laws of 
the land ; and if the pope had authority for one, he 
must have had it for the other. The only true argu- 
ment, as it seems to me, apart from Christianity, for a 
discriminating toleration, is, that it is of no use to at- 
tempt to stop heresy or schism by persecution, unless,^ 
perhaps, it be conducted upon the plan of direct warfare 
and massacre. You cannot preserve men in the fai h 
by such means, though you may stifle for a while any 
open appearance of dissent. The experiment has now 
been tried, and it has failed \ and that is by a great 
deal the best argument for the magistrate against a 
repetition of it. 

I know this, — that if a parcel of fanatic missiona-* 
ries were to go to Norway, and were to attempt to dis- 
turb the fervent and undoubting Lntheranism of the 
fine independent inhabitants of the interior of that 
country, I should be right glad to hear that the busy 
fools had been quietly shipped off— any where. I don't 
include the people of the seaports in my praise of the 
Norwegians ; I speak of the agricultural population. 
If that country could be brought to maintain a million 
more of inhabitants, Norway might defy the world j 
. Vol. XL— G 13 



140 TABLE-TALK 

it would be aurapufn- and impregnable ; but it is much 
underhanded now. 



January 12, 1834. 

Articles of Faith — Modern Quakerism — Devotional 
Spirit — Sectarianism — Origen . 

I HAVE drawn up four, or perhaps five, articles of 
faith, by subscription, or rather by assent, to which I 
think a large comprehension might take place. My 
articles would exclude Unitarians, and, I am sorry to 
say, members of the church of Rome, but with this dif- 
ference, — that the exclusion of Unitarians would be 
necessary and perpetual ; that of the members of the 
church of Rome depending on each individual's own 
conscience and intellectual light. What I mean is 
this : — that the Rom. mists hold the faith in Christ — 
but unhappily they also hold certain opinions, partly 
ceremonial, partly devotional, partly speculative, which 
have so fatal a facility of being degraded into base, 
corrupting, and even idolatrous practices, that if the 
Romanist will make them, of the essence of his religion, 
he must of course be excluded. As to the Quakers, I 
hardly know what to say. An article on the sacraments 
would exclude them. My doubt is, whether baptism 
and the eucharist are properly any parts of Christian- 
ity, or not rather Christianity itself ; the one, the ini- 
tial conversion or light ; the other, the sustaining and 
invigorating life ; both together the <i>2i k»i ^ot^, which 
are Christianity. A line can only begin once ; hence, 
there can be no repetition of baptism ; but a line may 
be endlessly prolonged by continued production ; hence 
the sacrament of love and life lasts for ever. 

But really there is no knowing what the modern 
Quakers are or believe, excepting this — that they are 
altogether degenerated from their ancestors of the sev- 
enteenth century. I should call modern Quakerism, 
so far as I know it as a scheme of faith, a Socinian 
Calvinism. Penn himself was a Sabellian, and seems 



OF S. T. COLERIDGE. 147 

to have disbelieved even the historical fact of the life 
and death of Jesus : most certainly Jesus of Nazareth 
was not Penn's Christ, if he had any. It is amusing 
to see the modern Quakers appealing now to history 
for a confirmation of their tenets and discipline — and 
by so doing, in effect abandoning the stronghold of 
their founders. As an imperium in imperio, I think 
the original Quakerism a conception worthy of Lycur- 
gus. Modern Quakerism is like one of those gigantic 
trees which are seen in the forests of North America, 
— apparently flourishing, and preserving all its greatest 
stretch and spread of branches ; but when you cut 
through an enormously thick and gnarled bark, you find 
the whole inside hollow and rotten. Modern Quaker- 
ism, like such a tree, stands upright by help of its in- 
veterate bark alone. Bark 2l Quaker, and he is a poor 
creature. 



How much the devotional spirit of the church has 
suffered by that necessary evil, the Reformation, and 
the sects which have sprung up subsequently to it ! 
All our modem prayers seem tongue-tied. We appear 
to be thinking more of avoiding an heretical expression 
or thought than of opening ourselves to God, We do 
not pray with that entire, unsuspecting, unfearing, child- 
like profusion of feeling, which so beautifully shines 
forth in Jeremy Taylor and Andrewes, and the wri- 
tings of some of the older and better saints of the 
Romish church, and particularly of that remarkable wo- 
man St. Theresa.* And certainly Protestants, in their 
anxiety to have the historical argument on their side, 
have brought down the origin of the Romish errors too 
late. Many of them began, no doubt, in the apostolic 
age itself ; I say errors, not heresies, as that dullest 

* She was a native of Avila in Old Castile, and a Carmelite 
nun. Theresa established an order which she called the " Re- 
formed," and which became very powerful. Her works are divi- 
ded into ten books, of which her autobiography forms a remarka- 
ble part. She died in 1582, and was canonized by Gregory XV. 
in 1622.— Ed. 

G2 



148 TABLE-TALK 

of the fathers, Epiphanius, calls them. Epiphanius is 
very long and fierce upon the Ebionites. There may 
have been real heretics under that name ; but I believe 
that, in the beginning, the name was on account of its 
Hebrew meaning, given to, or adopted by, some poor 
mistaken men — perhaps of the Nazarene way — who 
sold all their goods and lands, and were then obliged 
to beg. I think it not improbable that Barnabas was 
one of these chief mendicants, and that the collection 
made by St. Paul was for them. You should read 
Rhenferd's account of the early heresies. I think he 
demonstrates about eight of Epiphanius's heretics to be 
mere nicknames given by the Jews to the Christians. 
Read " Hermas, or the Shepherd," of the genuineness 
of which and of the epistle of Barnabas I have no 
doubt. It is perfectly orthodox, but full of the most 
ludicrous tricks of gnostic fancy — the wish to find the 
INew Testament in the Old. This gnosis is percepti- 
ble in the Epistle to the Hebrews, but kept exquisitely 
within the limits of propriety. In the others it is ram.- 
pant, and most truly " puffeth up," as St. Paul said of it. 
What between the sectarians and the political econ- 
omists, the English are denationalized. England I 
see as a country, but the English nation seems obliter- 
ated. What could redintegrate us again ? Must it be 
another threat of foreign invasion 1 

I never can digest the loss of most of Origen's 
works : he seems to have been almost the only very 
great scholar and genius combined among the early 
Fathers. Jerome was very inferior to him. 



January 20, 1834 

Some Men like Musical Glasses — Sublime and Non- 
sense — Atheist. 

Some men are like musical glasses ; — to produce 
fcheir finest tones, you must keep them wet. 



OF S. T. COLERIDGE 149 

"Well ! that passage is what I call the sublime dash- 
ed to pieces by cutting too close with the fiery four-in- 
hand round the corner of nonsense. 



How did the Atheist get his idea of that God whom 
he denies ? 



February 22, 1834. 

Proof of Existence of God — Kant's Attempt — Plural- 
ity of Worlds. 

Assume the existence of God, — and then the harmo- 
ny and fitness of the physical creation may be shown to 
correspond with and support such an assumption ; — but 
to set about proving the existence of a God by such 
means is a mere circle, a delusion. It can be no proof 
to a good reasoner, unless he violates all syllogistic 
logic, and presumes his conclusion. 

Kant once set about proving the existence of God, 
and a masterly effort it was.* But in his later great 
work, the " Critique of the Pure Reason," he saw its 
fallacy, and said of it — that if the existence could be 
proved at all, it must be on the grounds indicated by him. 



I never could feel any force in the arguments for a 
plurality of worlds, in the common acceptation of that 
term. A lady once asked me — " What then could be 
the intention in creating so many great bodies, so ap- 
parently useless to us?" I said — I did not know, 
except perhaps to make dirt cheap. The vulgar infer- 
ence is in alio genere. What in the eye of an intel- 
lectual and omnipotent Being is the whole sidereal sys- 
tem to the soul of one man for whom Christ died ? 

* In his essay, " Der einzig mogliche Beweisgrund zu einer 
Demonstration des Daseyns Gottesy — "The only possible argu- 
ment or ground of proof for a demonstration of the existence of 
God." It was published in 1763 ; the " Critique" in 1781.— Ed. 
13* 



1 50 f ABLE-TALK 

' March 1, 1834. 

A Reasoner, 

I AM by the law of my nature a reasoner. A person 
who should suppose I meant by that word an arguer, 
would not only no-t understand me, but would under- 
stand the contrary of my meaning. I can take no in- 
terest whatever in hearing or saying any thing merely 
as a fact — merely as having happened. It must refer 
to something within me before I can regard it with any 
curiosity or care. My mind is always energic — I don't 
mean energetic ; I require in every thing what, for lack 
of another word, I may call propriety^ — that is, a rea- 
son why the thing is at all, and why it is there or then 
rather than elsewhere or at another time. 



March 5, 1834. 

Shakspeare' s Intellectual Action — Reading in Macbeth 
— Crabbe and Southey — Peter Simple and Tom Crin- 
gle's Log. 

Shakspeare's intellectual action is wholly unlike 
that of Ben Jonson or Beaumont and Fletcher. The 
latter see the totality of a sentence or passage, and 
then project it entire. Shakspeare goes on creating, and 
evolving B. out of A., and C. out of B., and so on, just 
as a serpent moves, which makes a fulcrum of its own 
body, and seems for ever twisting and untwisting its 
own strength. 



Perhaps the true reading in Macbeth* is — blank 

" Come, thick night, 
And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell, 
That my keen knife see not the wound it makes, 
Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark !" 

Act i., sc. 5. 
But, after all, may not the ultimate allusion be to so humble an 
image as that of an actor peeping through the curtain on the 
stage 1 — Ed. 



OP S. T. COLERIDGE. 151 

height of the dark — and not " blanket." " Height" was 
most commonly written, and even printed, het. 

I think Crabbe and Southey are something alike ; 
Crabbe's poems are founded on observation and real 
life — Southey's on fancy and books. In facility they 
are equal, though Crabbe's English is of course not 
upon a level with Southey's, which is next door to 
faultless. But in Crabbe there is an absolute defect 
of the high imagination ; he gives me little or no pleas- 
ure : yet, no doubt, he has much power of a certain 
kind, and it is good to cultivate, even at some pains, a 
catholic taste in literature. I read all sorts of books 
with some pleasure, except modern sermons and trea- 
tises on political economy. 



I have received a great deal of pleasure from some 
of the modern novels, especially Captain Marryat's 
*' Peter Simple."* That book is nearer Smollett than 
any 1 remember. And "Tom Cringle's Log" in Black- 
wood is also most excellent. 



March 15, 1834. 

Chaucer — Shakspeare — Ben Jonson — Beaumont and 
Fletcher — Daniel — Massinger. 

I TAKE unceasing delight in Chaucer. His manly 
cheerfulness is especially delicious to me in my old 
age.j How exquisitely tender he is, and yet how per- 
fectly free from the least touch of sickly melancholy 
or morbid drooping ! The sympathy of the poet with 
the subjects of his poetry is particularly remarkable in 

* Mr. Coleridge said, he thought this novel would have lost 
nothing in energy if the author had been more frugal in his swear- 
ing. — Ed. 

t Eighteen years before, Mr. Coleridge entertained the same 
feelings towards Chaucer : — " Through all the works of Chaucer 
there reigns a cheerfulness, a manly hilarity, which makes it al- 
most impossible to doubt a correspondent habit of feeling in the 
author himself." — B. Lit., vol. i., p. 32. — Ed. 



1 52 TABLE-TALK 

Shakspeare and Chaucer ; but what the first effects by 
a strong act of imagination and mental metamorphosis, 
the last does without any effort, merely by the inborn 
kindly joyousness of his nature. How well we seem 
to know Chaucer! How absolutely nothing do we 
know of Shakspeare ! 

I cannot in the least allow any necessity for Chau- 
cer's poetry, especially the Canterbury Tales, being 
considered obsolete. Let a few plain rules be given 
for sounding the final e of syllables, and for expressing 
the termination of such words as ocean and nation, Slc, 
as dissyllables, — or let the syllables to be sounded in 
such cases be marked by a competent metrist. This 
simple expedient would, with a very few trifling excep- 
tions, where the errors are inveterate, enable any 
reader to feel the perfect smoothness and harmony of 
Chaucer's verse. As to understanding his language, 
if you read twenty pages with a good glossary, you 
surely can find no further difficulty, even as it is ; but 
I should have no objection to see this done : — Strike 
out those words which are now obsolete, and I will 
venture to say that I will replace every one of them by 
words still in use out of Chaucer himself, or Gower 
his disciple. I don't want this myself; I rather like to 
see the significant terms which Chaucer unsuccessfully 
offered as candidates for admission into our language ; 
but surely so very slight a change of the text may well 
be pardoned, even by black-letterati, for the purpose 
of restoring so great a poet to his ancient and most 
deserved popularity. 

Shakspeare is of no age. It is idle to endeavour to 
support his phrases by quotations from Ben Jonson, 
Beaumont and Fletcher, &c. His language is entirely 
his own, and the younger dramatists imitated him. 
The construction of Shakspeare's sentences, whether 
in verse or prose, is the necessary and homogeneous 
vehicle of his peculiar manner of thinking. He is not 
the style of the age. More particularly, Shakspeare's 
blank verse is an absolutely new creation. Read 



OF S. T. COLERIDGE. 153 

Daniel* — the admirable Daniel — in his " Civil Wars,'' 
and " Triumphs of Hymen." The style and language 
are just such as any very pure and manly writer of the 
present day — Wordsworth, for example — would use; 
it seems quite modern in comparison with the style of 
Shakspeare. Ben Jonson's blank verse is very mas- 
terly and individual, and perhaps Massingers is even 
still nobler. In Beaumont and Fletcher it is constantly 
slipping into lyricisms. 

I believe Shakspeare was not a whit more intel- 
ligible in his own day than he is now to an educated 
man, except for a few local allusions of no conse- 
quence. As I said, he is of no age — nor, I may add, 
of any religion, or party, or profession. The body 
-and substance of his works came out of the unfathom- 
able depths of his own oceanic mind : his observation 
and reading, which were considerable, suppUed him 
with the drapery of his figures. t 



As for editing Beaumont and Fletcher, the task 
would be one immensi laboris. The confusion is now 
so great, the errors so enormous, that the editor must 
use a boldness quite unallowable in any other case. 
All I can say as to Beaumont and Fletcher is, that I 

* " This poet's well-merited epithet is that of the ' well-lan- 
:guaged Daniel ;' but, likewise, and by the consent of his contem- 
poraries, no less than of all succeeding critics, the 'prosaic Dan- 
iel.' Yet those who thus designate this wise and amiable writer, 
ftom the frequent incorrespondenc^ of his diction with his metre, 
in the majority of his composilioils, not only deem them valuable 
and interesting on other accounts, but wiUingly admit that there 
are to be found throughout his poems, and especially in his Epis- 
tles and in his Hymen's Triumph, many and exquisite specimens 
of that style, which, as the neutral ground of prose and verse, ia 
common to both." — Biog. Lit, vol. ii., p. 82. 

t Mr. Coleridge called Shakspeare " the myriad-minded man,'''' 
olfTjp hv(.ic-vpH — " a phrase," said he, " which I have borrowed frona 
a Greek monk, who applies it to a patriarch of Constantinople. I 
might have said, that I have reclaimed, rather than borrowed it, 
for it seems to belong to Shakspeare de jure singulari, et ex 
-privilegio natura." — See Biog. Lit., vol. ii.,p. 13. I have some- 
times thought that Mr. C. himself had no inconsiderable claim la 
ihe same appellation. — Ed. 

G3 



154 TABLE-TALK 

can point out well enough where something has been 
lost, and that something so and so was probably in the 
original ; but the law of Shakspeare's thought and 
verse is such, that I feel convinced that not only could 
I detect the spurious, but supply the genuine, word. 



March 20, 1834. 

Lord Byron and H. Wal'poWs " Mysterious Mother" 
— Lewis'' s " Jamaica JournaV^ 

Lord Byron, as quoted by Lord Dover,* says, that 
the " Mysterious Mother" raises Horace Walpole 
above every author living in his, Lord Byron's, time. 
Upon which I venture to remark, first, that I do not 
believe that Lord Byron spoke sincerely ; for I suspect 
that he made a tacit exception in favour of himself at 
least ; secondly, that it is a miserable mode of com- 
parison which does not rest on difference of kind. It 
proceeds of envy, and malice, and detraction, to say 
that A. is higher than B., unless you show that they 
are in pari materia ;■. — thirdly, that the " Mysterious 
Mother" is the most disgusting, detestable, vile com- 
position that ever came from the hand of man. No 
one with a spark of true manliness, of which Horace 
AValpole had none, could have written it. As to the 
blank verse, it is indeed better than Rowe's and Thom- 
son's, which was execrably bad : — any approach, there- 
fore, to the manner of the old dramatists, was of course 
an improvement ; but the loosest lines in Shirley are 
superior to Walpole's best. 

* In the memoir prefixed to the correspondence with Sir H. 
Mann, Lord Byron's words are ; — " He is the ultimus Roma- 
norum, the author of the ' Mysterious Mother,' a tragedy of the 
highest order, and not a puUng love-play. He is the father of the 
first romance, and of the last tragedy, in our language ; and surely 
worthy of a higher place than any living author, be he who he 
may." — Preface to Marino Falicro. Is not " Romeo and Juliet" 
a love-play 1 — But why reason about such insincere, splenetic 
trash ^— Ed. 



OF S. T. COLERIDGE. 155 

Lewis's " Jamaica Journal" is delightful ; it is al- 
most the only unaffected book of travels or touring I 
have read of late years. You have the man himself, 
and not an inconsiderable man, — certainly a much 
finer mind than I supposed before from the perusal of 
his romances, &c. It is by far his best work, and 
will live and be popular. Those verses on the Hours 
are very pretty; but the Isle of Devils is, like his 
romances, — a fever dream — horrible, without point or 
terror. 



April 16, 1834. 
Sicily — Malta — Sir F. Head — Sir Alexander Ball. 

I FOUND that every thing in and about Sicily had 
been exaggerated by travellers, except two things — ■ 
the folly of the government and the wretchedness of 
the people. They did not admit of exaggeration. 

Really, you may learn the fundamental principles of 
political economy in a very compendious way, by ta- 
king a short tour through Sicily, and simply reversing 
in your own mind every law, custom, and ordinance 
you meet with. I never was in a country in which 
every thing proceeding from man was so exactly 
wrong. You have peremptory ordinances against 
making roads, taxes on the passage of common vege- 
tables from one miserable village to another, and so on. 

By-the-by, do you know any parallel in modern his- 
tory to the absurdity of our giving a legislative assem- 
bly to the Sicilians ? It exceeds any thing I know. 
This precious legislature passed two bills before it 
was knocked on the head : the first was, to render 
lands inalienable ; and the second, to cancel all debts 
due before the date of the bill. 

And then, consider the gross ignorance and folly of 
our laying a tax upon the Sicilians ! Taxation in its 
proper sense can only exist where there is a free cir- 
culation of capital, labour, and commodities throughout 
the community. But to tax the people in countriesi 



156 TABLE-TALK 

like Sicily and Corsica, where there is no intertiaf 
eommunication, is mere robbery and confiscation. A 
crown taken from a Corsican living in the sierras- 
would not get back to him again in ten years. 



It is interesting to pass from Malta to Sicily — from 
the highest specimen of an inferiorraee, the Saracenic^ 
to the most degraded class of a superior race, the 
European. 

But what can Sir Francis Head, in the " Bubbles,"* 
mean by talking of the musical turn of the Maltese ? 
Why, when I was in Malta, all animated nature was 
discordant ! The very eats caterwauled more horribly 
and pertinaciously there than I ever heard elsewhere. 
The children will stand and scream inarticulately at 
each other for an hour together, out of pure love to 
dissonance. The dogs are deafening, and so through- 
out. Musical indeed I I have hardly gotten rid of 
the noise yet. 

* I have the following note by Mr. C. on this work:-" 
" How can I account for the Anglo-gentlemanly, sensible, and 
Itindly mind breathing forth every where in the first half of this 
volume, as contrasted with the strange, one-sided representation' 
of our public schools and universities in the other, which repre- 
sentation, with a full admission on my part of their defects, or 
rather deficiencies, or still' rather their ■paucities, amounts to a' 
double lie — a lie by exaggeration, and a lie by omission. And 
as to the universities — even relatively to Oxford thirty years ago.- 
such a representation would have been slander — and relatively to 
Cambridge as it now is, is blasphemy. And then how perfectly- 
absurd is the writer's attribution of the national debt of seven or 
eight hundred millions to the predominance of classical taste and 
academic talent. And his still stranger ignorance, that without 
the rapidly increasing national debt, Great Britain could never 
have become that monstrous mammon-bloated Dives, or wooden 
idol of stuffed pursemen, in which character the writer thinks it 
so worthy of his admiration. 

" In short, at one moment, I imagine that Mr. Frere, or ,■ 

or any other Etonian, or alumnus of Westminster or Winchester, 
might be the author ; at another, I fall back to Joseph Hume, Dr. 
Birkbeck, Edinburgh, and Aberdeen." Perhaps if the author of 
the " Buiibles" had not finished his classical studies at fourteen, 
he might have seen reason to modify his heavy censure on Greek> 
and Latin. As it is, it must be borne with patience,~ED. 



i 



OF S. T. COLERIDGE. 157 

No tongue can describe the moral corruption of the 
Maltese when the island was surrendered to us. 
There was not a family in it in which a wife or a 
daughter was not a kept mistress. A marquis of an- 
cient family applied to Sir Alexander Ball to be ap- 
pointed his valet. " My valet !" said Ball ; " what can 
you mean, sir ?" The marquis said, he hoped he 
should then have had the honour of presenting petitions 
to his excellency. " Oh, that is it, is it !" said Sir 
Alexander : " my valet, sir, brushes my clothes, and 
brings them to me. If he dared to meddle with matters 
of public business, I should kick him down stairs." 

In short, Malta was an Augean stable, and Ball had 
all the inclination to be a Hercules.* His task was 
most difficult, although his qualifications were remark- 
able. I remember an English officer of very high rank 
soliciting him for the renewal of a pension to an aban- 
doned woman who had been notoriously treacherous to 
us. That officer had promised the woman as a matter 
of course — she having sacrificed her daughter to him. 
Ball was determined, as far as he could, to prevent 
Malta from being made a nest of home patronage. He 
considered, as was the fact, that there was a contract 
between England and the Maltese. Hence the govern- 
ment at home, especially Dundas, disliked him, and 
never allowed him any other title than that of Civil 
Commissioner. We have, I believe, nearly succeeded 
in alienating the hearts of the inhabitants from us. 
Every officer in the island ought to be a Maltese, ex- 
cept those belonging to the immediate executive : 100/. 
per annum to a Maltese, to enable him to keep a gilt 

* I refer the reader to the five concluding essays of the third 
volume of the " Friend," as a specimen of what Mr. C. might 
have done as a biographer if an irresistible instinct had not devoted 
him to profounder labours. As a sketch — and it pretends to noth- 
ing more — is there any thing more perfect in our literature than 
the monument raised in those essays to the memory of Sir Alex- 
ander Ball 1 — and there are some touches added to the character 
of Nelson, which the reader, even of Southey's matchless Lif^ 
of our hero, will find both new and iatereating — Ed. 
14 



15S TABLE-TALK 

carriage, will satisfy him where an Englishman must 
have 2,000/. 



May 1, 1834. 

Cambridge Petition to Admit Dissenters. 

There are, to my grief, the names of some men to 
the Cambridge petition for admission of the Dissenters 
to the University, whose cheeks I think must have 
burned with shame at the degrading patronage and be- 
fouling eulogies of the democratic press, and at seeing 
themselves used as the tools of the open and rancorous 
enemies of the church. How miserable to be held up 
for the purpose of inflicting insult upon men, whose 
worth, and ability, and sincerity you well know, — and 
this by a faction banded together like obscene dogs, and 
cats, and serpents, against a church which you pro- 
foundly revere ! The time — the ^ime~the occasion 
and the motive ought to have been argument enough,, 
that, even if the measure were right or harmless in 
itself, not now, nor with such as these, was it to be 
effected ! 



May 3, 1834. 

Corn-I^aws. 

Those who argue that England may safely depend 
upon a supply of foreign corn, if it grow none or an in- 
sufficient quantity of its own, forget that they are sub- 
jugating the necessaries of life itself to the mere luxu- 
ries or comforts of society. Is it not certain that the 
price of corn abroad will be raised upon us as soon as it 
is once known that we must buy ? — and when that fact 
is known, in what sort of a situation shall we be ? Be- 
sides this, the argument supposes that agriculture is 
not a positive good to the nation, taken in and by itself, 
as a mode of existence for the people, which supposi- 
tion is false and pernicious ; and if we are to become 



OF S. T. COLERIDGE. 155 

A great horde of manufacturers, shall we not, even more 
than at present, excite the ill-will of all the manufac- 
turers of other nations ! It has be«n already shown, in 
evidence which is before all the world, that some of our 
manufacturers have acted upon the accursed principle 
of deliberately injuring foreign manufactures, if they 
can, even to the ultimate disgrace of tho country and 
loss to themselves. 



May 19, 1834, 

Christian Sabbat lu 

How grossly misunderstood the genuine character of 
the Christian Sabbath, or Lord's day, seems to be even 
by the church ! To confound it with the Jewish Sab- 
bath, or to rest its observance upon the fourth com- 
mandment, is in my judgment heretical, and would so 
have been considered in the primitive church. That 
cessation from labour on the Lord's day could not have 
been absolutely incumbent on Christians for two cen- 
turies after Christ, is apparent^ because during that 
period the greater part of the Christians were either 
slaves or in official situations und-er Pagan masters or 
superiors, and had duties to "perform for those who did 
not recognise the day. And we know tliat St. Paul 
sent back Onesimus to his master, and told every 
Christian slave, that, being a Christian, he was free in 
his mind indeed, but still must serve his earthly master, 
although he might laudably seek for his personal free- 
dom also. If the early Christians had refused to work 
on the Lord's day, rebellion and civil war must have 
been the immediate consequences. But there is no in- 
timation of any such cessation. 

The Jewish Sabbath was commemorative of the ter- 
mination of the great act of creation ; it was to record 
that the world had not been from eternity, nor had 
arisen as a dream by itself, but that God had created it 
hy distinct acts of power, and that he had hallowed the 
day or season in which he rested or desisted from his 



1 60 TABLE-TALK 

work. When our Lord arose from the dead, the old 
creation was, as it were, superseded, and the new crea- 
tion then began ; and therefore the first day and not 
the last day, the commencement and not the end, of the 
work of God was solemnized. 

Luther, in speaking of the good by itsdf, and the 
good for its expediency alone, instances the observance 
of the Christian day of rest, — a day of repose from 
manual labour, and of activity in spiritual labour, — a 
day of joy and co-operation in the work of Christ's 
creation. "Keep it holy" — says he — "for its use* 
sake, both to body and soul ! But if anywhere the 
day is made holy for the mere day's sake, — if any- 
where any one sets up its observance upon a Jewish 
foundation, then I order you to work on it, to ride on it, 
to dance on it, to feast on it — to do any thing that shall 
reprove this encroachment on the Christian spirit and 
liberty." 

The early church distinguished the day of Christian 
rest so strongly from a fast, that it was unlawful for a 
man to bewail even Ids own sins, as such only, on that 
day. He was to bewail the sins of all, and to pray as 
one of the whole of Christ's body. 

And the English Reformers evidently took the same 
view of the day as Luther and the early church. But, 
unhappily, our church, in the reigns of James and 
Charles the First, was so identified with the undue ad- 
vancement of the royal prerogative, that the Puritanical 
Judaizing of the Presbyterians was but too well seconded 
by the patriots of the nation, in resisting the wise ef- 
forts of the church to prevent the incipient alteration in 
the character of the day of rest. After the Restoration, 
the bishops and clergy in general adopted the view 
taken and enforced by their enemies. 

By-the-by, it is curious to observe, in this semi-infi- 
del and Malthusian Parliament, how the Sabbatarian 
spirit unites itself with a rancorous hostility to that one 
institution which alone, according to reason and expe- 
rience, can ensure the continuance of any general 
religion at all in the nation at larger -Some of these 



1 



OF S. T. COLERIDGE. 161 

gentlemen, who are for not letting a poor labourino- 
nian have a dish of baked potatoes on a Sunday, reti- 
gionis gratia — God forgive that audacious blasphemy ! 
— are foremost among those who seem to live but in 
vilifying, weakening, and empoverishing the national 
church. I own my indignation boils over against such 
contemptible fellows. 

I sincerely wish to preserve a decent quiet on Sun- 
day. I would prohibit compulsory labour, and put down 
operas, theatres, &c,, for this plain reason : that if the 
rich be allowed to play, the poor will be forced — or, 
what comes to the same thing — will be induced to work. 
1 am not for a Paris Sunday. But to stop coaches, and 
let the gentleman's carriage run, is monstrous. 



May 25, 1834. 

High Prizes and Revenues of the Church. 

Your argument against the high prizes in the church 
might be put strongly thus : — Admit that in the begin- 
ning it might have been fairly said, that some eminent 
rewards ought to be set apart for the purpose of stimu- 
lating and rewarding transcendent merit ; what have 
you to say now, after centuries of experience to the 
contrary? Have the high prizes been given to the 
highest genius, virtue, or learning 1 Is it not rather 
the truth, as Jortin said, that twelve votes in a contested 
election will do more to make a man a bishop than an 
admired commentary on the twelve minor prophets? 
To all which and the like I say again, that you ought 
not to reason from the abuse, which may be rectified, 
against the inherent uses of the thing. Appoint the 
most deserving, and the prize will answer its purpose. 
As to the bishops' incomes, in the first place, the nett 
receipts — that which the bishops may spend — have 
been confessedly exaggerated beyond measure ; but, 
waiving that, and allowing the highest estimate to be 
correct, I should like to have the disposition of the 
14* 



162 TABLE-TALK 

episcopal revenue in any one year by the late or the 
present Bishop of Durham, or the present Bishops of 
London or Winchester, compared with that of the most 
benevolent nobleman in England, of any party in poli- 
tics. I firmly believe that the former give away, in 
charity of one kind or another, public, official, or pri- 
vate, three times as much in proportion as the latter. 
You may have a hunks or two, now and then ; but so 
you would, much more certainly, if you were to reduce 
the incomes to two thousand pounds per annum. As 
a body, in my opinion, the clergy of England do, in 
truth, act as if their property were impressed with a 
trust, to the utmost extent that can be demanded by 
those who affect, ignorantly or not, that lying legend 
of a tripartite or quadripartite division of the tithe 
bv law. 



May 31, 1834. 

Sir C. WetliereWs Speech^-National Church — Dis- 
senters — Papacy — Universities. 

I THINK Sir Charles Wetherell's speech before the 
Privy Council very effective. I doubt if any other 
lawyer in Westminster Hall could have done the thing 
60 well. 



The National Church requires, and is required by, 
the Christian Church, for the perfection of each : for, 
if there were no national church, the mere spiritual 
church would either become, like the papacy, a dread- 
ful tyranny over mind and body, or else would fall 
abroad into a multitude of enthusiastic sects, as in 
England in the seventeenth century. It is my deep 
conviction that, in a country of any religion at all, 
liberty of conscience can only be permanently pre- 
served by means, and under the shadow of, a national 
church — a political establishment connected with, but 
distinct from, the spiritual church. 



OF S. T. COLERIDGE. 163 

I sometimes hope that the rabid insolence and un- 
disguised despotism of temper of the Dissenters may 
at last awaken a jealousy inihe laity of the Church of 
England ; but their apathy and inertness are, I fear, too 
profound — too providential. 

Whatever the papacy may have been on the conti- 
nent, it was always an unqualified evil to this country. 
It destroyed what was rising of good, and introduced 
a thousand evils of its own. The papacy was, and 
still is, essentially extra-national ; it affects, temporally, 
to do that which the spiritual Church of Christ can 
alone do — to break down the natural distinctions of 
nations. Now, as the Roman papacy is in itself local 
and peculiar, of course this attempt is nothing but a 
direct attack on the political independence of other 
nations. 

The institution of Universities was the single check 
on the papacy. The pope always hated and maligned 
the universities. The old coenobitic establishments 
of England were converted — perverted, rather — into 
monasteries and other monking receptacles. You see 
it was at Oxford that Wicliffe alone found protection 
and encouragement. 



June 2, 1834. 

Schiller* s Versification — German Blank Verse. 

Schiller's blank verse is bad. He moves in it as 
a fly in a glue-bottle. His thoughts have their con- 
nexion and variety, it is true, but there is no sufficiently 
corresponding movement in the verse. How different 
from Shakspeare's endless rhythms ! 



There is a nimiety — a too-muchness — in all Ger- 
mans. It is the national fault. Lessing had the best 
notion of blank verse. The trochaic termination of 



164 TABLE-TALK 

German words renders blank verse in that language 
almost impracticable. We have it in our dramatic 
hendecasyllable ; but then we have a power of inter- 
weaving the iambic close ad libitum. 



June 14, 1834. 

Roman Catholic Emancipation — Duke of Wellington — 
Coronation Oath. 

The Roman Catholic Emancipation Act — carried in 
the violent, and, in fact, unprincipled manner it was — 
was, in effect, a Surinam toad ; and the Reform Bill, 
the Dissenters' admission to the Universities, and the 
attack on the Church, are so many toadlets, one after 
another detaching themselves from their parent brute. 



If you say there is nothing in the Romish religion, 
sincerely felt, inconsistent with the duties of citizen- 
ship and allegiance to a territorial Protestant sovereign, 
cadit qumstio. For if that is once admitted, there can 
be no answer to the argument from numbers. Cer- 
tainly, if the religion of the majority of the people be 
innocuous to the interests of the nation^ the majority 
have a natural right to be trustees of the nationally — 
that property which is set apart for the nation's use, 
and rescued from the gripe of private hands. But 
when I say, for the nation's use, I mean the very re- 
verse of what the radicals mean. They would convert 
it to relieve taxation, which I call a private, personal, 
and perishable use. A nation's uses are immortal. 

How lamentable it is to hear the Duke of Welling- 
ton expressing himself doubtingly on the abominable 
sophism that the Coronation Oath only binds the King 
as the executive power — thereby making a Highgate 
oath of it. But the Duke is conscious of the ready retort 
which his language and conduct on the Emancipation 
Bill afford to his opponents. He is hampered by that 
affair- 



OF S. T. COLERIDGE. 1^5 

June 20, 1834: 

Corn-Laws — Modern Political Economy. 

In the argument on the Corn-Laws there is a f^er- 
oiQcta-ig eU tiXXa ysvo^;. It may be admitted that the 
great principles of Commerce require the interchange 
of commodities to be free ; but commerce, which is 
barter, has no proper range beyond luxuries or conve- 
niences ; — it is properly the complement to the full 
existence and development of a state. But how 
can it be shown that the principles applicable to 
an interchange of conveniences or luxuries apply also 
to an interchange of necessaries ? No state can be such 
properly, which is not self-subsistent at least ; for no 
state that is not so, is essentially independent. The 
nation that cannot even exist without the commodity 
of another nation, is in effect the slave of that other na- 
tion. In common times, indeed, pecuniary interest 
will prevail, and prevent a ruinous exercise of the pow- 
er which the nation supplying the necessary must 
have over the nation which has only the convenience 
or luxury to return ; but such interest, both in individ- 
uals and nations, will yield to many stronger passions. 
Is Holland any authority to the contrary ? If so. Tyre 
and Sidon and Carthage were so ! Would you put 
England on a footing with a country which can be 
overrun in a campaign, and starved in a year ? 

The entire tendency of the modern or Malthusian 
political economy is to denationalize. It would dig up 
the charcoal foundations of the temple of Ephesus to 
burn as fuel for a steam-engine ! 



June 21, 1834. 

Mr. , in his poem, makes trees coeval with 

Chaos ; — which is next door to Hans Sachse,* who, in 

* Hans Sachse was born 1494, and died 1576. — Ed. 



166 TABLE-TALK 

describing Chaos, said it was so pitchy dark that even 
the very cats ran against each other ! 

June 23, 1834. 
Socinianism — Unitarianism — Fancy and Imagination. 

Faustus Socinus worshipped Jesus Christ, and said 
tha* God had given him the power of being omnipres- 
ent. Davidi, with a little more acuteness, urged that 
mere audition or creaturely presence could not possi- 
bly justify worship from men ; — that a man, how glo- 
rified soever, was no nearer God in essence than the 
vulgarest of the race. Prayer, therefore, was inappli- 
cable. And how could a man be a mediator between 
God and man ? iHow could a man,, with sins himself, 
offer any compensation for, or expiation of, sin, unless 
the most arbitrary caprice were admitted into the coun- 
sels of God ? — And so, at last, you see, it was discov- 
ered by the better logicians among the Socinians, that 
there was no such thing as sin at all. 

My faith is this : — God is the Absolute Will : It is 
his Name and the meaning of it. It is the Hyposta- 
sis. As begetting his own Alterity, the Jehovah, the 
Manifested — He is the Father ; but the Love and the 
Life — the Spirit — proceeds from both. 

I think Priestley must be considered the author of 
modern Unitarianism. I owe, under God, my return 
to the faith, to my having gone much further than the 
Unitarians, and so having come round to the other side. 
I can truly say, I never falsified the Scripture. I al- 
ways told them that their interpretations of the Scrip- 
ture were intolerable upon any principles of sound crit- 
icism ; and that, if they were to offer to construe the 
will of a neighbour as they did that of their Maker, 
they would be scouted out of society. I said then, 
plainly and openly, that it was clear enough that John 
and Paul were not Unitarians. But at that time I had 
a strong sense of the repugnancy of the doctrine of 
vicarious atonement to the moral being, and I thought 



OF S. T. COLERIDGE. 167 

nothing could counterbalance that. " What care I," 
I said, " for the Platonisms of John, or the Rabbinisms 
of Paul ? — My conscience revolts !" That was the 
ground of my Unitarianism. 

Always believing in the government of God, I was a 
fervent Optimist. But as I could not but see that the 
present state of things was not the best, I was neces- 
sarily led to look forward to some future state. 



You may conceive the difference in kind between 
the Fancy and the Imagination in this way, — that if 
the check of the senses and the reason were with- 
drawn, the first would become delirium, and the last 
mania. The Fancy brings together images which 
have no connexion natural or moral, but are yoked to- 
gether by the poet by means of some accidental coin- 
cidence ; as in the well-known passage inHudibras ; — 

The sun had long since in the lap 
Of Thetis taken out his nap, 
And like a lobster boyl'd, the mom 
From black to red began to turn."* 

The Imagination modifies images, and gives unity to 
variety ; it sees all things in one, il piii nelV uno. 
There is the epic imagination, the perfection of which 
is in Milton ; and the dramatic, of which Shakspeare 
is the absolute master. The first gives unity by throw- 
ing back into the distance ; as after the magnificent 
approach of the Messiah to battle,! the poet, by one 
touch from himself — 

" far off their coming shone T' — 

makes the whole one image. And so at the conclu- 

* Part ii.,c.2,v. 29. 

t " Forth rush'd with whirlwind sound 

The chariot of Paternal Deity, 

Flashing thick flames, wheel within wheel undrawn, 

Itself instinct with spirit, but convoy'd 

By four cherubic shapes ; four faces each 

Had wondrous ; as with stars their bodies all 

And wings were set with eyes ; with eyes the wneel* 

Of beryl, and careering fires between ; 

Over their heads a crystal firmament. 



168 TABLE-TALK 

sion of the description of the appearance of the entran- 
ced angels, in which every sort of image from all the 
regions of earth and air is introduced to diversify and 
illustrate, — the reader is brought back to the single 
image by — 

" He call'd so loud, that all the hollow deep 
Of Hell resounded."* 

The dramatic imagination does not throw back, but 
brings close ; it stamps all nature with one, and that 
its own, meaning, as in Lear throughout. 



At the very outset, what are we to think of the sound- 
Whereon a sapphire throne, inlaid with pure 
Amber, and colours of the showery arch. 
He, in celestial panoply all arm'd 
Of radiant Urim, work divinely wrought, 
Ascended ; at his right hand Victory 
Sat eagle-wing'd ; beside him hung his bow 
And quiver, with three-bolted thunder stored ; 
And from about him fierce effusion roU'd 
Of smoke, and bickering flame, and sparkles dire ; 
Attended with ten thousand thousand saints, 
He onward came ; far off their coming shone ; 
And twenty thousand (I their number heard) 
Chariots of God, half on each hand, were seen 
He on the wings of cherub rode sublime 
On the crystalline sky, in sapphire throned, 
Illustrious far and wide ; but by his own 
First seen."— P. L., b. vi., v. 749, &c. 

* " and caird 

His legions, angel forms, who lay entranced 

Thick as autumnal leaves that strew the brooks 

In Vallombrosa, where th' Etrurian shades. 

High over-arch'd, imbower ; or scatter'd sedge 

Afloat, when with fierce winds Orion arm'd 

Hath vex'd the Red Sea coast, whose waves o'erthrew 

Busiris, and his Memphian chivalry. 

While with perfidious hatred they pursued 

The sojourners of Goshen, who beheld 

From the safe shore their floating carcasses 

And broken chariot wheels ; so thick bestrown, 

Abject and lost lay these, covering the flood, 

Under amazement of their hideous change. 

He calVd so loud, that all the hollow deep 

Of H'Al resounded:'— F. L., b. i., v. 300, &c. 



OF S. T. COLERIDGE. 169 

iiess of this modern system of political economy, the 
direct tendency of every rule of which is to denation- 
alize, and to make the love of our country a foolish 
superstition ? 



June 28, 1834. 

Mr. Coleridge's System — Biographia Literaria — Dis- 
senters. 

You may not understand my system, or any given 
part of it, — or, by a determined act of wilfulness, you 
may, even though perceiving a ray of light, reject it 
in anger and disgust : — But this I will say, — that if 
you once master it, or any part of it, you cannot hesi- 
tate to acknowledge it as the truth. You cannot be 
skeptical about it. 

The metaphysical disquisition at the end of the first 
volume of the " Biographia Literaria" is unformed and 
immature ; it contains the fragments of the truth, but it 
is not fully thought out. It is wonderful to myself to 
think how infinitely more profound my views now are, 
and yet how much clearer they are withal. The circle 
is completing ; the idea is coming round to, and to be, 
the common sense. 

The generation of the modern worldly Dissenter 
was thus : Presbyterian, Arian, Socinian, and last, 
Unitarian. 

Is it not most extraordinary to see the Dissenters 
calling themselves the descendants of the old Noncon- 
formists, and yet clamouring for a divorce of Church 
and State ? AVhy — Baxter and the other great leaders 
would have thought a man an atheist who had proposed 
such a thing. They were rather for merging the State 
in the Church. But these our modern gentlemen, who 
are blinded by political passion, give the kiss of alli- 
ance to the harlot of Rome, and walk arm-in-arm with 
those who deny the God that redeemed them, if so thei 



170 TABLE TALK 






may but wreak their insane antipathies on the National 
Church ! Well ! I suppose they have counted the 
cost, and know what it is they would have, and can 
keep. 



July 5, 1834. 

Lord BrooJ^e — Barrow and Dry den — Peter Wilkins 
and Stoihard — Fielding and Richardson — Bishop 
Sandford — Roman Catholic Religion. 

I DO not remember a more beautiful piece of prose 
in English than the consolation addressed by Lord 
Brooke (Fulke Greville) to a lady of quality on certain 
conjugal infelicities. The diction is such that it might 
have been Avritten now, if we could find any one com- 
bininof so thouohtful a head with so tender a heart and 

o _ o 

so exquisite a taste. 



Barrow often debased his language merely to evi- 
dence his loyalty. Tt was, indeed, no easy task for a 
man of so much genius, and such a precise mathemati- 
cal mode of thinking, to adopt even for a moment the 
slang of L'Estrange and Tom Brown ; but he succeeded 
in doing so sometimes. With the exception of such 
parts, Barrow must be considered as closing the first 
great period of the English language. Dryden began 
the second. Of course there are numerous sub- 
divisions. 

Peter Wilkins is to my mind a work of uncommon 
beauty ; and yet Stothard's illustrations have added 
beauties to it. If it were not for a certain tendency to 
affectation, scarcely any praise could be too high for 
Stothard's designs. They give me great pleasure. 
What an exquisite image is that of Peter's Glum flut- 
tering over the ship, and trying her strength in lifting 
the stores ! I believe that Robinson Crusoe and Peter 
Wilkins could only have been written by islanders. 



OF S. T. COLERIDGE. 171 

No continentalist could have conceived either tale. 
Davis's story is an imitation of Peter Wilkins ; but 
there are many beautiful things in it ; especially his 
finding his wife crouching by the fireside — she having, 
in his absence, plucked out all her feathers — to be 
like him ! 

It would require a very peculiar genius to add an- 
other tale, ejusdtm generis, to Robinson Crusoe and 
Peter Wilkins. I once projected such a thing ; but 
the difficulty of a pre-occupied ground stopped me. 
Perhaps La Motte Fouque might eflect something; 
but I should fear that neither he, nor any other Ger- 
man, could entirely understand what may be called the 
" desert islamF feeling. I would try the marvellous 
line of Peter Wilkins, if I attempted it, rather than the 
real fiction of Robinson Crusoe. 

What a master of composition Fielding was ! Upon 
my word, I think the ffidipus Tyrannus, the Alchymist, 
and Tom Jones the three most perfect plots ever 
planned. And how charming, how wholesome, Field- 
ing always is ! To take him up after Richardson is 
like emerging from a sick-room heated by stoves into 
an open lawn on a breezy day in May. 

I have been very deeply interested in the account 
of Bishop Sandford's life, published by his son. He 
seems to have been a thorough gentleman upon the 
model of St. Paul, whose manners were the finest of 
any man's upon record. 

I think I could have conformed to the then dominant 
church before the Reformation. The errors existed, 
but they had not been riveted into peremptory articles 
of faith before the Council of Trent. If a Romanist 
were to ask me the question put to Sir Henry Wotton,* 

* *' Having, at his being in Rome, made acquaintance with a 
pleasant priest, who invited him, one evening, to hear their vesper 
music at church ; the priest, seeing Sir Henry stand obscurely in 
a corner, sends to him by a boy of the choir this question, wrir. in 



172 TABLE TALK 

I should content myself by answering, that I could not 
exactly say when my religion, as he was pleased to 
call it, began — but that it was certainly some sixty or 
seventy years before his^ at all events — which began 
at the Council of Trent. 



July 10, 1834. 

Euthanasia. 

I AM dying, but without expectation of a speedy 
release. Is it not strange that very recently by-gone 
images, and scenes of early life, have stolen into my 
mind, like breezes blown from the spice-islands of 
Youth and Hope — those two realities of this phantom 
world ! I do not add Love, — for what is Love but 
Youth and Hope embracing, and so seen as one ? I say 
realities ; for reality is a thing of degrees, from the 
Iliad to a dream ; kcc] yap r omp U A/o$ '/c-r;. Yet, in a 
strict sense, reality is not predicable at all of aught 
below Heaven. " Es enim in ccslis, Pater noster, qui 
tu vere es /" Hooker wished to live to finish his Ec- 
clesiastical Polity ; so I own I wish life and strength 
had been spared to me to complete my Philosophy. 
For, as God hears me, the originating, continuing, and 
sustaining wish and design in my heart was to exalt 
the glory of his name ; and, which is the same thing 
in other words, to promote the improvement of man- 
kind. But visum alitcr Deo, and his will be done. 



*^* This note may well finish the present speci- 
mens. What follows was for the memory of private 
friends only. Mr. Coleridge was then extremely ill ; 
but certainly did not believe his end to be quite so 
near at hand as it was. — Ed. 

a small piece of paper — ' Where was your religion to be found 
before Luther V To which question Sir Henry presently under- 
writ — ' My religion was to be found then, where yours is not to 
be found now — in the written word of God.' " — Izaak Walton's 
Life of Sir Henri/ Wotton. 



OF S. T. COLERIDGE 173 



The following Recollections of Mr. Coleridge, writ- 
ten in May, 1811, have been also communicated to 
me by my brother, Mr. Justice Coleridge : — 

" 20th April, 1811, at Richmond. 

"We got on politics, and he related some curious 
facts of the prince and Perceval. Then, adverting to 
the present state of affairs in Portugal, he said that he 
rejoiced not so much in the mere favourable turn as 
in the end that must now be put to the base reign of 
opinion respecting the superiority and invincible skill 
of the French generals. Brave as Sir John Moore 
was, he thought him deficient in that greater and more 
essential manliness of soul which should have made 
him not hold his enemy in such fearful respect, and 
which should have taught him to care less for the 
opinion of the world at home. 

" We then got, I know not how, to German topics. 
He said that the language of their literature was en- 
tirely factitious, and had been formed by Luther from 
the two dialects, High and Low German ; that he had 
made it, grammatically, most correct, more so, perhaps, 
than any other language : it was equal to the Greek, 
except in harmony and sweetness. And yet the Ger- 
mans themselves thought it sweet : Klopstock had 
repeated to him an ode of his own to prove it, and 
really had deceived himself, by the force of associa- 
tion, into a belief that the harsh sounds, conveying, in- 
deed, or being significant of, sweet images or thoughts, 
were themselves sweet. Mr. C. was asked what he 
thought of Klopstock. He answered, that his fame 
was rapidly declining in Germany ; that an English- 
man might form a correct notion of him by uniting the 
moral epigram of Young, the bombast of Hervey, and 
the minute description of Richardson. As to sublim- 
ity, he had, with all Germans, one rule for producing 
it ; — it was, to take something very great, and make it 
very small in comparison with that which you wish to 



174 TABLE TALK 

elevate. Thus, for example, Klopstock says, — ' As the 
gardener goes forth, and scatters from his basket seed 
into the garden ; so does the Creator scatter worlds 
with his right hand.' Here worlds, a large object, are 
made small in the hands of the Creator ; consequently, 
the Creator is very great. In short, the Germans were 
not a poetical nation in the very highest sense. Wie- 
land was their best poet : his subject was bad, and his 
thoughts often impure ; but his language was rich and 
harmonious, and his fancy luxuriant. Sotheby's trans- 
lation had not at all caught the manner of the original. 
But the Germans were good metaphysicians and critics : 
they criticised on principles previously laid down ; 
thus, though they might be wrong, they were in no 
danger of being self-contradictory, which was too often 
the case with English critics. 

" Young, he said, was not a poet to be read through 
at once. His love of point and wit had often put an 
end to his pathos and sublimity ; but there were parts 
in him which must be immortal. He (Mr. C.) loved 
to read a page of Young, and walk out to think of him. 

" Returning to the Germans, he said that the state of 
their religion, when he was in Germany, was really 
shocking. He had never met one clergyman a Christian ; 
and he found professors in the universities lecturing 
against the most material points in the Gospel. He 
instanced, I think, Paulus, whose lectures he had at 
tended. The object was to resolve the miracles into 
natural operations ; and such a disposition evinced 
was the best road to preferment. He severally cen- 
sured Mr. Taylor's book, in which the principles of 
Paulus were explained and insisted on with much gra- 
tuitous indelicacy. He then entered into the question 
of Socinianism, and noticed, as I recollect, the passage 
in the Old Testament : 'The people bowed their faces, 
and worshipped God and the king.' He said, that all 
worship implied the presence of the object worship- 
ped : the people worshipped, bowing to the sensuous 
presence of the one, and the conceived omnipresence 
of the other. He talked of his having constantly to 



OF S. T. COLERIDGE. 175 

defend the Church against the Socinian Bishop of 
Llandaff, Watson. The subject then varied to Roman 
Cathohcism, and he gave us an account of a contro- 
versy he had had with a very sensible priest in Sicily 
on the worship of saints. He had driven the priest 
from one post to another, till the latter took up the 
ground, that, though the saints were not omnipresent, 
yet God, who was so, imparted to them the prayers 
offered up, and then they used their interference with 
Him to grant them. ' That is, father,' said C. in reply, 
' excuse my seeming levity, for I mean no impiety ; 
that is — I have a deaf and dumb wife, who yet under- 
stands me, and I her, by signs. You have a favour to 
ask of me, and want my wife's interference ; so you 
communicate your request to me, who impart it to her, 
and she, by signs back again, begs me to grant it.' 
The good priest laughed and said, ^Fopulus vtdt decipi, 
€t decipiatur .'' 

" We then got upon the Oxford controversy, and he 
was decidedly of opinion that there could be no doubt 
of (yopleston's complete victory. He thought the Re- 
view had chosen its points of attack ill, as there must 
doubtless be in every institution so old much to repre- 
hend and carp at. On the other hand, he thought that 
Copleston had not been so severe or hard upon them 
as he might have been ; but he admired the critical 
part of his work, which he thought very highly valu- 
able, independently of the controvei}sy. He wished 
some portion of mathematics was more essential to a 
degree at Oxford, as he thought a gentleman's educa- 
tion incomplete without it, and had himself found the 
necessity of getting up a little when he could ill spare 
the time. He every day more and more lamented his 
neglect of them when at Cambridge. 
: " Then glancing off to Aristotle, he gave a very high 
character of him. He said that Bacon objected to 
Aristotle the grossness of his examples, and Davy now 
did precisely the same to Bacon : both were wrong ; 
for each of those philosophers wished to confine the 
attention of the mind in their works to the form of 



176 TABLE TALK 

reasoning only by which other truths might be estab- 
lished or elicited, and therefore the most trite and com- 
monplace examples were in fact the best. He said 
that during a long confinement to his room he had taken 
up the Schoolmen, and was astonished at the immense 
and acute knowledge displayed by them ; that there 
was scarcely any thing which modern philosophers had 
proudly brought forward as their own which might not 
be found clearly and systematically laid down by them 
in some or other of their writings. Locke had sneered 
at the Schoolmen unfairly, and had raised a foolish 
laugh against them by citations from their Quid libet 
questions, which were discussed on the eves of holy- 
days, and in which the greatest latitude was allowed, 
being considered mere exercises of ingenuity. We 
had ridiculed their quiddities, and why ? Had we not 
borrowed their quantity and their quality, and why 
then reject their quiddity^ when every schoolboy in 
logic must know, that of every thing may be asked, 
Quantum est ? Quale est ? and Quid est ? the last 
bringing you to the most material of all points, its in- 
dividual being. He afterward stated, that in a History 
of Speculative Philosophy, Avhich he was endeavour- 
ing to prepare for publication, he had proved, and to the 
satisfaction of Sir James Mackintosh, that there was 
nothing in Locke which his best admirers most ad- 
mired, that might not be found more clearly and better 
laid down in Descartes or the old Schoolmen ; not that 
he was himself an implicit disciple of Descartes, 
though he thought that Descartes had been much mis- 
interpreted. 

" When we got on the subject of poetry and Southey, 
he gave us a critique of the Curse of Kehama, the 
fault of which he thought consisted in the association 
of a plot and a machinery so very wild with feelings so 
sober and tender: but he gave the poem high commend- 
ation, admired the art displayed in the employment of 
the Hindoo monstrosities, and begged us to observe the 
noble feeling excited of the superiority of virtue over 
vice ; that Kehama went on from the beginning to the 



OF S. T. COLERIDGE. 177 

end of the poem, increasing in power, while Kailyal 
gradually lost her hopes and her protectors ; and yet, 
by the time we got to the end, we had arrived at an 
utter contempt and even carelessness of the power of 
evil, as exemplified in the almighty Rajah, and felt a 
complete confidence in the safety of the unprotected 
virtue of the maiden. This he thought the very great 
merit of the poem. 

'' When we walked home with him to the inn, he got 
on the subject of the Latin Essay for the year at Ox- 
ford,* and thought some consideration of the corrup- 
tion of language should be introduced into it. It ori- 
ginated, he thought, in a desire to abbreviate all ex- 
pression as much as possible ; and no doubt, if in one 
word, without violating idiom, I can express what 
others have done in more, and yet be as fully and 
easily understood, I have manifestly made an improve- 
ment ; but if, on the other hand, it becomes harder, 
and takes more time to comprehend a thought or 
image put in one word by Apuleius than when ex- 
pressed in a whole sentence by Cicero, the saving is 
merely of pen and ink, and the alteration is evidently 
a corruption." 



April 21 — Richmond. 

'* Before breakfast we went into Mr. May's delight- 
ful book-room, where he was again silent in admiration 
of the prospect. After breakfast we walked to church. 
He seemed full of calm piety, and said he always felt 
the most delightful sensations in a Sunday churchyard 
— that it struck him as if God had given to man fifty-two 
springs in every year. After the service he was ve- 
hement against the sermon, as commonplace, and in- 
vidious in its tone towards the poor. Then he gave 
many texts from the lessons and gospel of the day, as 
affording fit subjects for discourses. He ridiculed the 

* On Etymology. 

Vol. II.— P 



178 TABLE TALK 

absurdity of refusing to believe every thing that you 
could not understand ; and mentioned a rebuke of Dr. 
Parr's to a man of the name of Frith, and that of an- 
other clergyman to a young man, who said he would be- 
lieve notlting which he could not understand : — ' Then, 
young man, your creed will be the shortest of any man's 
I know.' 

" As we walked up Mr. Cambridge's meadows to- 
wards Twickenham, he criticised Johnson and Gray as 
poets, and did not seem to allow them high merit. 
The excellence of verse, he said, was to be imtrans- 
latable into any other words without detriment to the 
beauty of the passage ; — the position of a single word 
could not be altered in Milton without injury. Gray's 
personifications, he said, were mere printer's devils' 
personifications — persons with a capital letter — ab- 
stract qualities with a small one. He thought Collins 
had more genius than Gray, who was a singular in- 
stance of a man of taste, poetic feeling, and fancy, 
without imagination. He contrasted Dryden's opening 
of the 10th satire of Juvenal with Johnson's : — 

' Let observation with extensive view, 
Survey mankind from Ganges to Peru.* 

which was as much as so say, — 

' Let observation with extensive observation observe mankind.' 

" After dinner he told us a humourous story of his 
enthusiastic fondness for Quakerism when he was at 
Cambridge, and his attending one of their meetings, 
which had entirely cured him. When the little chil- 
dren came in, he was in raptures with them, and de- 
scanted upon the delightful mode of treating them now, 
in comparison to what he had experienced in child- 
hood. He lamented the haughtiness with which Eng- 
lishmen treated all foreigners abroad, and the facility 
with which our government had always given up any 
people which had allied itself to us at the end of a 



OF S. T. COLERIDGE. 179 

war ; and he particularly remarked upon our abandon- 
ment of Minorca. These two things, he said, made 
us universally disliked on the continent ; though, as a 
people, most highly respected. He thought a war 
with America inevitable ; and expressed hfs opinion 
that the United States were unfortunate in the prema- 
tureness of their separation from this country, before 
they had in themselves the materials of moral society 
■ — before they had a gentry and a learned class — -the 
former looking backwards, and giving the sense of 
stability — the latter looking forwards, and regulating 
the feelings of the people. 

" Afterward, in the drawing-room, he sat down by 
Professor Rigaud, with whom he entered into a dis- 
cussion of Kant's System of Metaphysics. The little 
knots of the company were speedily silent : Mr. C.'s 
voice grew louder ; and abstruse as the subject was, 
yet his language was so ready, so energetic, and so 
eloquent, and his illustrations so very neat and appo- 
site, that the ladies even paid him the most solicitous 
and respectful attention. They were really enter- 
tained with Kant's Metaphysics ! At last I took one 
of them, a very sweet singer, to the piano-forte ; and, 
when there was a pause, she began an Italian air. 
She was anxious to please him, and he was enrap- 
tured. His frame quivered with emotion, and there 
was a titter of uncommon delight on his countenance. 
When it was over, he praised the singer warmly, and 
prayed she might finish those strains in heaven ! 

" This is nearly all, except some anecdotes, which 
I recollect of our meeting with this most interesting, 
most wonderful man. Some of his topics and argu- 
ments I have enumerated, but the connection and the 
words are lost. And nothing that I can say can give 
any notion of his eloquence and manner — of the hold 
which he soon got on his audience — of the variety of 
his stores of information — or, finally, of the artlessness 
of his habits, or the modesty and temper with which 
he listened to, and answered, arguments contradictory 
to his own.— J. T. C." 



180 



The following Pieces were accidentally omitted ui the 
Collection of Mr. Coleridge's Poetical Works lately 
published. 



DARWINIANA. 

THE HOUR WHEN WE SHALL MEET AGAIN. 

{Composed during illness and in absence.) 

Dim Hour ! that sleep'st on pillowing clouds afar, 
O rise and yoke the turtles to thy car ! 
Bend o'er the traces, blame each lingering dove, 
And give me to the bosom of my Love ! 
My gentle Love, caressing and caress'd, 
With heaving heart shall cradle me to rest ; 
Shed the warm tear-drop from her smiling eyes, 
Lull with fond wo, and med'cine me with sighs ; 
While finely-flushing float her kisses meek, 
Like melted rubies, o'er my pallid cheek. 
Chill'd by the night, the drooping Rose of May 
Mourns the long absence of the lovely Day : 
Young Day returning at her promised hour 
Weeps o'er the sorrows of her fav'rite flower ; 
Weeps the soft dew, the balmy gale she sighs. 
And darts a trembhng lustre from her eyes. 
New life and joy th' expanding flow'ret feels : 
His pitying mistress mourns, and mourning heals !^ 



PSYCHE. 

The Butterfly the ancient Grecians made 

The Soul's fair emblem, and its only name — 

But of the soul, escaped the slavish trade 

Of mortal life ! For in this earthly frame 

Ours is the reptile's lot, much toil, much blame. 

Manifold motions making little speed, 

And to deform and kill the things whereon we feed. 

* A lady who had read the Ancient Mariner and Christabel, told 
Mr. Coleridge, after reading the above lines, " that now she did, 
indeed, see that he was a poet !" And the poet bade me pre- 
serve the verses for the sake of the criticism. — Ed. 



181 



COMPLAINT. 

How seldom, friend ! a good great man inherits 
Honour or wealth with all his worth and pains ! 

It sounds like stories from the land of spirits, 

If any man obtain that which he merits, 
Or any merit that which he obtains. 

REPROOF. 

For shame, dear friend ! renounce this canting strain ! 

What wouldst thou have a good great man obtain 1 

Place — titles — salary — a gilded chain 1 — 

Or throne of corses which his sword hath slain 1 

Greatness and goodness are not means, but ends ! 

Hath he not always treasures, always friends, 

The good great man 1 Three treasures — Love, and Light, 

And calm Thoughts, regular as infant's breath ; — 

And three firm friends, more sure than day and night — 

Himself, his Maker, and the angel Death. 



INSCRIPTION FOR A TIME-PIECE. 

NOW ! It is gone. — Our brief hours travel post, 
Each with its thought or deed, its Why, or How : 
But know, each parting hour gives up a ghost 
To dwell within thee — an eternal NOW ! 



ISRAEL'S LAMENT ON THE DEATH OF THE PRIN- 
CESS CHARLOTTE OF WALES. 

Translated from the Hebrew of Hymen Hurmiz. 

Mourn, Israel [ Sons of Israel, mourn ! 

Give utterance to the inward throe, 
As wails of her first love forlorn 

The virgin clad, in robes of wo ! 

Mourn the young mother snatch'd away 

From light and life's ascending sun ! 
Mourn for the Babe, Death's voiceless prey, 

Earn'd by long pangs, and lost ere won ! 

Mourn the bright Rose that bloom'd and went 

Ere half disclosed its vernal hue I 
Mourn the green Bud, so rudely rent, 

It brake the stem on which it grew ! 
16 



182 

Mourn for the universal wo 

With solemn dirge and falt'ring tongue ; 
For England's Lady is laid low, 

So dear, so lovely, and so young ! 

The blossoms on her tree of life 

Shone with the dews of recent bliss ; — 
Translated in that deadly strife 

She plucks its fruit in Paradise. 

Mourn for the Prince who rose at morn 
To seek and bless the firstling Bud 

Of his own Rose, and found the thorn, 
Its point bedew'd with tears of blood. 

Mourn for Britannia's hopes decay 'd ; 

Her daughters wail their dear defence, 
Their fair example prostrate laid, 

Chaste love, and fervid innocence ! 

O Thou I who mark'st the monarch's path, 
To sad Jeshurun's sons attend ! 

Amid the lightnings of thy wrath 
The showers of consolation send ! 

Jehovah frowns ! — The Islands bow, 
And Prince and People kiss the rod ! 

Their dread chastising Judge wert Thou — 
Be Thou their Comforter, God ! 



TRANSLATION OF A PASSAGE IN OTTFRIED'S MET- 
RICAL PARAPHRASE OF THE GOSPELS. 

Written about the time of Charlemagne, in the Theotiscan, or tran- 
sitional state of the Teutonic Language from the Gothic to the 
old German of the Suabian Period. Ottfried is describing the cir- 
cumstances immediately following the birth of our Lord. 

She gave with joy her virgin breast ; 
She hid it not, she bared the breast, 
Which suckled that divinest babe ! 
Blessed, blessed were the breasts 
Which the Saviour infant kiss'd ; 
And blessed, blessed was the mother 
Who wrapp'd his limbs in swaddling-clothes, 
Singing placed him on her lap. 
Hung o'er him with her looks of love. 
And soothed him with a lulling motion. 
Blessed ! for she shelter'd him 
From the damp and chilling air ; — 



183 

Blessed, blessed ! for she lay 
With such a babe in one bless'd bed, 
Close as babes and mothers lie ! 
Blessed, blessed evermore, 
With her virgin lips she kiss'd, 
With her arms and to her breast 
She embraced the babe divine, 
Her babe divine the virgin mother ! 
There Hves not on this ring of earth 
A mortal, that can sing her praise. 
Mighty mother, virgin pure, 
In the darkness and the night 
For us she bore the heavenly Lord, 



THE END. 



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